<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Render by ArchaeopteryxDreams</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25494415">Render</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArchaeopteryxDreams/pseuds/ArchaeopteryxDreams'>ArchaeopteryxDreams</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Stories of Aligare [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Bodyguard, Coming of Age, Danger, Dragons, Elemental Magic, Ensemble Cast, Gen, Interspecies family, Mental Health Issues, Mystery, Natural Disasters, Non-Human Humanoid Society, Original Universe, POV Nonhuman, Pacifism, Science Fiction &amp; Fantasy, Service Dogs, Strong Female Characters, Utopia, banding together in difficult times, finding one's place, food insecurity, lowkey science in a magical world, supportive communities, the teenage mc's mother stays alive in this one</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 03:36:08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>100,495</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25494415</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArchaeopteryxDreams/pseuds/ArchaeopteryxDreams</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>For the insect-like aemet folk of Aloftway village, there has been much work and meagre reward. After poor harvests and a brush with forest fire, now wolves are striking down folk who venture into the forest. Without a precedent in their legends to guide them, all aemetkind knows to do is hope and pray.</p><p>Rue is a young aemet coming of age in this troubled community. Named after a lucky plant, she has never cared much for luck. She believed from the start that it was folly for the adults to move here — and when fellow aemets start turning up dead, Rue is through waiting. With her chemistry skills, her keen mind and a guard dog at her side, Rue promises herself that she’ll solve Aloftway’s problems. But she’ll need help from Felixi, a cantankerous game hunter of the dragon-like korvi race — who knows more about the wolf attacks than he’s willing to share.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Stories of Aligare [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1803451</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Render (A Story of Aligare) was first posted in 2013, as an ebook under a different pen name. This foreword in Chapter 1 is some newly written introductory matter; Chapter 2 and onward is the original Render story, which cannonballs right into the human-free world.</p><p>Like Remedy (A Story of Aligare), this story is built on my strong belief that a fantasy novel doesn't need war, intentional brutality, bigotry, or mean-spiritedness to be an "adult" story, and that nonhuman characters are not innately childish. Death and violence are part of Render, including a scene of finding a dead person, but violence against people is the most horrifying thing these peaceful folk can think of. No one is secretly a villain. Against uncaring natural forces, everyone in Render is just struggling to be a good person, so that we humans can reflect on what that even means.</p><p>Fun fact: Rue's family skill of tinctoring (testing the earth's acidity with dye) is based on the fact that the reactive dye in our real-world litmus strips is made from lichen. </p><p>Anyway, thank you for clicking.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>First, an introduction.</p><p>Far away, there is a world like Earth, though it has never been walked upon by humans. This star-tossed planet lost its sun long ago and its surface is mostly dark and cold — except for a dome of magical energy that envelops and keeps warm a realm's worth of land. This place is guarded by beings of great magical power. It has plentiful plants, animals, and elemental magics . And it has no name: the land is simply called "the land" by its people, and they have never met outsiders who might question it.</p><p>The people of the land are themselves magical -- like any living being on this world, people's casting energy is as vital as their blood. Each is born with an innate elemental alignment, although with hard work and study they can all learn to wield other elements. The people of the land have no countries or governments: they live in mixed-race towns, sharing with one another their resources and their unique skills. They have never known war or prejudice. The korvi, aemets, and ferrin of the land have never seen each other as anything but friends.</p><p> </p><p>Aemets are a betweenkind people, with traits of both mammals and insects. They stand on two feet, and have two arms with blunt-nailed hands. Aemets have two curved antennae, and they mostly have internal bones except for the pillbug-like shell plates on their backs that function as a spine. They possess plantcasting magic, airsense (a tactile awareness of nearby air, plus whatever the air is touching), and a lifespan of approximately 50 years. Though often nervous and superstitious, aemets are often skilled farmers and craftspeople, those people who form the productive core of any community. Almost always, aemets become anxious when alone -- although aemet hermits are not unheard of, either.</p><p>Korvi are a dragonkind people, with traits of both reptiles and birds. They are the tallest and strongest race, standing on two feet and using their lizard-like tails as a stabilizing third leg. Korvi have two horns on their crocodilian heads, two arms with clawed hands, and a pair of feathered wings on their backs. They possess firecasting magic, excellent eyesight, great physical resilience, and a lifespan averaging 200 years. Although most korvi are best at flying between towns and performing service and entertainment work, some fare better at tolerating mining conditions or fighting off wild predators.</p><p>Ferrin are a mammalian people, physically similar to Earth weasels (although more similar in diet and behaviour to squirrels). They are the smallest race, approximately the size of a domestic Earth cat, covered with fur in shades of white, grey and black. Ferrin walk on two feet or four, whichever is most convenient, and use their small-thumbed forepaws as well as their teeth to hold tools. They possess electricasting magic, keen hearing and sense of smell, and a lifespan of approximately 20 years — and most ferrin retain a child-like affinity for learning through their entire lives. Their short lives often prevent them from being great masters at any one subject, but no one makes a more devoted assistant than a ferrin.</p><p> </p><p>The following stories speak of aemets, korvi and ferrin navigating their circumstances, and learning their own personal truths. Illnesses, natural disasters, and bad luck descend onto good people, and folk support their neighbours through it all. Being a good person is not always a straightforward task, but the three peoplekinds consider it vital. And once life's challenges are overcome, they become stories for other folk to take solace in, or learn from.</p><p> </p><p>This is one such story.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>She had only lived six years out of the broodery, but Rue could still see how odd this was. Aemetkind didn’t leave their homes behind without a hard-driving reason. And this day, they had no danger to run from — only uncertainty they were walking straight toward. It didn’t make any great weight of sense.</p><p>But Mother told Rue that they were testing a path to see where it led. And that once they reached that mountain site, there would be fertile new soil to grow in. She laid a hand on Rue’s shelled back, then. This new village site meant a great deal to Father — Rue knew that, didn’t she? So they were going to follow Father’s courageous example and strike out anew. Under great Verdana's trees, they would join other townsfolk and together try.</p><p>Rue held the fresh memory of Father leaving. The way he smiled before turning away, holding himself tall with a pack of supplies tied to his back. When he wandered, he never failed to find something, if only a handful of greens for dinner. In that light, starting a village made a fraction more sense. A very small fraction.</p><p>Moving day arrived. Rue held her bitter worries and watched the caravan shuddering ahead. They journeyed toward the mountain in horse-drawn carts, a long string of them trudging down a faint-worn path. Rue could airsense the wind’s shapes parting around the horses, split further by ears and legs and mane hair — then smashed back into large draughts against square cart surfaces. Other aemets sat in those carts, beside mounds of supplies. Their heads turned and their mouths shaped air; their antennae bobbed like grass stalks. Birdsong and bugsong were the only voices, at least until the neighbour folk ahead began another aemetkind song passed down by grandmothers.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Give a handful to our sisters</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Give a handful to our brothers</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Plant and sow and reap, and then</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Share a pouchful with the others</em>
</p><p>
  <em>May our seeds always take root</em>
</p><p>
  <em>May our seeds always take root</em>
</p><p> </p><p>The prairie air felt endless, surrounding those clear-sung hopes. Rue tried to focus on Mother’s presence — a bundle of calm wrapped in patchwork blankets, her face aimed steady forward — and that made the uneasy feeling smaller. The fears were just a lump in Rue’s innards instead of an entire boulder.</p><p>Korvi flew past the caravan — two otherkind friends hurrying ahead on their broad-feathered wings, bearing bundles of supplies with their muscle-hard arms. They sped away into the golden sky, lofted on the wind like weightless sparks. Beyond airsense’s reach, for long eightmoments, they were red and orange crumbs flying over the trees. Drifting oddly, jerking in the sky’s grasp. It looked like the wind over Surgings Mountain was difficult wind for korvi people to fly in. That would be a bad trait for a new home.</p><p>There would be more korvi joining the new village — more powerful, fiery friends — but Father needed to recruit them first. How long would it take for them to give an answer of yes or no? Rue’s own family had spent months thinking and talking and fretting. They had hoped and wondered and held worries in their silent throats. They had waited for Father to gather promises and favours. It took time for even this much hope to gather. Maybe the new korvi folk weren’t here with the caravan because they weren’t sure about the new village, either.</p><p>Time stretched onward. Rue sensed grasshoppers leaping in the sea of polegrass, among the criss-cross layers of drooping leaves. The two korvi reappeared in the mountain distance — speeding closer, cutting the air cleaner now that their heavy loads were gone. They veered wide around the travelling caravan — “So the horses won’t be frightened,” Mother said when Rue asked. And with beats of their flaring wings, the korvi circled, slowed and fluttered each toward the back of a cart. The red-feathered korvi chose Rue and Mother’s cart to land on. She descended, straight as a dropped stone, onto the back platform. Her two legs and her whip-strong tail compressed under her weight; her plaited mane feathers bounced between her horns. She looked to Mother and then Rue, while arranging her bright scarlet self into a kneeling, perching position.</p><p>“Pardon me,” the korvi said. She smiled, a small motion unfurling long over her snout. “I’ll rest here, if that is well with you.”</p><p>“It’s no trouble, friend.” Mother tried to pull a sack of kitchen supplies over, so the newcomer would have more room: her arms strained until the korvi woman helped push the load. “If you’ll humour me asking, are you Judellie?”</p><p>“I am! I think you must know Senford, if you know my name.”</p><p>“He’s my dear partner. Senford Wennering is part of the Tennel family.” Mother glowed — as she always did when she talked about Father. “And this,” Mother said with her hand laid on Rue’s shoulder, “is our middling daughter, Rue.”</p><p>“It’s fine to see your faces!” Judellie fanned her wings. Only a featherwidth, not like the showy korvi folk who bartered in the streets. “I am Judellie of Cherez. If you need any things carried, ask me, please.” She curled her words and bit the hard sounds off cleanly — a korvitongue accent, Rue realized.</p><p>“We may need a measure of your help when we’re closer to the mountain. I …”</p><p>“Of course,” Judellie said, with that same worried look everyone in the old village gave Mother. Like she was made of paper and onion skins. “Senford said there are plenty of rocky places a cart wheel might stick. You can help me, yes, Rue?”</p><p>Rue didn’t want to answer, a sudden reluctance like a mouthful of clay and a shivering in her bones. How childish of her. She was supposed to be nearly grown — and adults were confident enough to speak their thoughts.</p><p>“I’m strong,” she said. “I’ll help. And I can do the unpacking, too.“</p><p>“That’s good to hear. Aloftway will need many hands, I think.”</p><p>Mother squeezed Rue’s shoulder, barely enough to notice. She was thinking of luck and fortune, like always; it put an acrid taste in Rue’s mouth. They would need many helping hands, indeed.</p><p> </p><p>Mother had Judellie to talk to now. They spoke like a a pendulum swinging fore and back, a pattern of pleasant voices, Judellie resettling her feathers as a counterpoint. Rue kept minding the plains. She sensed more grasshoppers in leaping, whirring flight. And once, feather wings battering the grass, from a bird she couldn’t name the shape of.</p><p>Tinctoring caught Rue’s ear at one point, in the longest stretch of the day. Mother’s broad explanation of the Tennel skill, their art of dyeing the soil to learn its constitution.</p><p>"It's to help our sister plants grow," Mother said, "and make the best use of our plantcasting strength."</p><p>Shifting inside her blanket cocoon, removing her tinctoring kit from her tunic pocket, Mother showed the contents to Judellie as though that explained the real essence of the trade — the dye hues, the defining qualities of soil, the humours of the earth. Judellie listened intent but had nothing to say in return.</p><p>The caravan was nearer to the mountain now, enough to see the shapes of trees instead of a mere paint-smear of green in the distance. Now then, Rue thought, if Father had found tinctoria lichen up there, there had to be some potential. Some sweet nut hidden in the expanse. She, Rue Tennel, could find that potential in the same way she tested soil for the truth among its granules. That thought felt good somehow. Not flawless, but good. Rue kept it present in her thoughts, while minding the distant trees growing less distant.</p><p>Hours crawled onward. The caravan turned away from the sky-hung glow of the Great Gem, the cart shadows skating over gold-lit grass. The mountain lowlands rolled on either side of the path and the horses laboured upward, jolting the carts over bumps and rocks and the roots of determined little trees.</p><p>“There’s no more path,” Rue wondered. She held tight to the cart’s edge. This new village couldn’t become much of anything if it was didn’t even have a path to travel by.</p><p>“This is the path,” Mother told her. “It just hasn’t been used by many folk yet.”</p><p>“A little digging can make it smoother, too,” Judellie said. “Once we have some strong folk with time to spare.” She hopped out of the cart, buoying herself with a flutter of wings. “Come, Rue. Join me, if you will?”</p><p>Walking sounded wonderful, compared to the bucking cart ride that was turning Rue’s stomach and jamming her shell’s edges into her flesh. But Rue couldn’t jump, not while she watched the leaf litter passing under: a careless jump onto some hidden stone might turn her ankle. That would be no way to begin. She was mustering her will to move when Judellie’s feet came closer, blazing red skin and white claws against the faded leaves. Hands lifted Rue off the cart, through open air. Until her boots clacked against a bare stone and her legs held her weight again.</p><p>“Thank you,” she said small.</p><p>“I don’t mind,” Judellie said. She smiled past her own tight-folded wing, lifting the sack that held the Tennel home’s bedclothes. “Here. We can help the horses a little more, I think.”</p><p>While Rue tried the sack and found a grip on it, Mother’s presence caught her awareness. Mother sitting mildly in the cart, conserving her energy, and giving Rue an encouraging glimmer of a smile.</p><p>Clambering up the steepening path, sensing the spare shapes of cliff maples and squeezing her family’s bedsheets close, Rue worked to pull enough breath in. She kept pace with Judellie’s long strides, enough to sense every feather on Judellie’s swaying tail; it grew easier when Judellie bent to push a stuck cart but those moments didn’t last. The path kept onward, always stretching.</p><p>This wasn’t like Ordiny town, with its streets already flat as a pond’s shimmer, worn down over the course of an elden by thousands of feet. And in one releasing moment, Rue knew this new life would truly be a challenge. Ways and habits had to be carved out all over again, sculpted over people’s whole lifetimes. Creating a new village wasn’t so simple as travelling to a new patch of earth and arranging the family possessions there; Rue would have more to do than fetching water some evenings. She couldn’t forgive herself for thinking otherwise, an ignorant few hours ago. Maybe this was the moment she was a grown woman. The moment in which she touched responsibility and knew its texture. She gulped air and she kept on, upward.</p><p>More and more rocks jutted bare from the cliffside, and the cart wheels skewed aside from them. The maples all around shrank smaller, until their crown leaves matched the height of Mother’s head in the cart, until their roots bunched in the stony soil. But suddenly, the canopy soared upward again and the maples were tall, the sky-grazing sister trees that a legend might talk about. There was better soil here, surely. Some deposit of wholesomeness the trees could sink taproots into.</p><p>And after a moment more climbing, the shapes ahead turned familiar. A channel of open space with free-flowing breezes, lined on both sides with flat walls. The caravan came over one final crest of tree roots and Rue climbed over herself, and suddenly, she was looking down the length of a village’s main street. Board houses stood tied around trees — living tree trunks, not just poles set into grassland soil. Leaves made a swaying mesh overhead; the carts rolled on a long swath of bare dust.</p><p>“Here we are,” Mother said, barely louder than a breath. “Hello, Aloftway.”</p><p>Aemet neighbours pushed aside door curtains and called greetings. They were a scant few compared the the old village’s busy street, but friendly nonetheless. Ferrin leaped from the carts up ahead, small furkind folk with brush-tipped tails streaming out behind them. They ran four-footed into aemet homes, reunited now with their friend-families.</p><p>“This is a good beginning,” Judellie said. She ran her eyes over every edge of it, checking, keeping sentinel.</p><p>Rue expected her to say more — she recalled the distant red speck drifting, flapping hard — but Judellie had said her piece. She turned her long snout toward Mother and said she would show the Tennels to their home. Senford Wennering had tied it himself. Rather, he had tied most of these homes himself.</p><p>There were precious boards assembled into homes here, but what else was there? New villages didn’t necessarily have what they needed. They had to search, build, and break ground. The responsible feeling settled and gelled inside Rue. Here, she wasn’t just a Tennel daughter, possessing nothing but traditions and empty luck. Here, she could choose her path. Really choose. Take her family’s skills and find a well-suited place to use them, instead of merely testing farmers’ tired fields and recommending more manure like Mother always used to. Farmers really ought to know when they should add manure.</p><p>Watching unfamiliar houses pass by, carrying boxes into the one Judellie said was the Tennel home, Rue grew sure: she was going to hold herself tall.</p><p>Mother moved unsteady after the journey. Like her balance was liquid in a bottle, shaken to foam in the jolting cart. She sat on a wooden box Judellie overturned and, in a calm voice, she advised the two of them where to place everything. Where Judellie could stack the pantry goods and clothing bundles. How Rue ought to line stones up to make the hearth pit. Where to hang curtains to make flimsy walls, so that the two beds were sheltered. It was a dizzying multitude of work but it needed doing. And Rue liked the shard of smile Mother gave when things were laid just right.</p><p>Evening was falling by the time Rue had moments to spare. She walked out into the town street, eyeing house shapes and airsensing the folk moving all around. Muddy light streamed down, gold with a growing measure of purple, the shift from day’s brightcasting to night’s darkcasting. Shadows filled the spaces between homes. Rue imagined them cushioning each building, like cotton bolls had surrounded the fragile things inside boxes.</p><p>The town chromepiece stood gleaming in the darklight, its tin surfaces focusing a point of colour onto its face. A stone’s throw away from that was the largest and most stately building on the entire main street: the mage home. Aloftway had put its two most gossip-prone places together, so folk could seek their news, guidance and timekeeping all at once. That was just good planning.</p><p>As Rue passed the chromepiece, the pedestal caught her attention. It was a more intricate shape than Ordiny’s chromepiece. Ragged-edged like leaves. A sculpture of a dandelion — yet another plant with a legend-told significance. Aloftway had picked luck as its defining symbol.</p><p>Rue turned away. Ignoring the churn in her stomach, she rapped knuckles on the mage’s door pole.</p><p>Inside the home, air broke around a standing aemet figure, someone vine-slender. She pulled the door curtain aside and in the disturbed air, she looked at Rue with half-gathered memory soaking her face. This was Amarantha, the new mage that folk had spoken of: dry lines edged her eyes and brown threaded through her hair, the look of forty years' experience in living life.</p><p>“Ah, hello! Good evening!” She frowned slight, like regretting her double greeting, and quickly smiled again. “You’re, ah, well. You’re Rue?”</p><p>“That’s right. Rue Tennel.”</p><p>Amarantha brightened. “The lucky one!”</p><p>Rue held her mouth in a careful, neutral shape. She wasn’t supposed to complain about her granted luck.</p><p>“And you do look like your father, if I might say so. Same, ah. You’ve got his same shape about the forehead. Well, come in, dear!” Amarantha turned back into her home, hurrying back toward the hearth fire in the center of the floor. “Let me think now — the Tennels. Are you and Elova settling in well?”</p><p>“Yes, thank you. Mother is tired after the journey, but she said she’ll be fine after a night’s rest and a meal of nettle greens.”</p><p>“Your father had such foresight, planting nettle patches! I wouldn’t have thought of it. I’d have just looked for what great Verdana provided, I suppose.” Amarantha turned to Rue. Firelight warmed her face and her antennae arches; shadow pooled in the uneasy wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. “Anypace, best wishes and swift recovery to your mother. Tell her to visit if she needs a single thing.”</p><p>Rue didn’t think mountain air would do Mother any more good than the wholesome herbs had. Aloftway air felt like any other air to her — a little cooler, a little more prone to rushing gusts that drowned out sound. But not like some sort of medicine spilling between the mountain trees.</p><p>Gazing at the boiling pail, then at Rue, Amarantha tried, “Can I offer you tea, dear?”</p><p>“I’m well, thank you.”</p><p>“Ah, of course.” She stared a moment longer into the warm water. “Did you have something to see me about?”</p><p>Rue would have expected a mage to ask sooner. The keen-witted mage back in Ordiny town would have asked sooner, anypace. “Yes. Does this village have any set plans for Mother?”</p><p>“This village? As though Aloftway has a beating heart of its own!” Amarantha laughed too sharply. She retrieved a bone rod and began fussing with some thornwood roots roasting in the hearth embers. “Ah, well. This place might grow a heart soon enough. As much as your father told me, Elova Tennel is here to rest and heal, and anything else she does is an additional blessing. She’s welcome and wanted to be a tinctorer or— Well, any other task she cares for. Sewing. Tending the Middling circle.” Amarantha waved a hand, stirring a gust of air. “Anywhat she’d like.”</p><p>Since Mother had lost her strength, folk only asked her for what she could give. Amarantha’s smile this evening was another in a long line of kind fretting. Rue stood with hands folded, fearing to ask but needing to know.</p><p>“Then, does this village— Do you have plans for me?”</p><p>Amarantha regarded her wide-eyed. “None particularly. Why, dear bug? Would you like a task?”</p><p>“I’ve been out of the broodery for years,” Rue said stony. “And I’ve been taught by my mother to prepare tinctor dye and test the mettle of all types of soil. And how to grow vines, and keep a house in sure order. So I should have a job.”</p><p>“Of course, Rue. Ah, you are a mite old to be called a bug, please pardon my tongue.” Face crumpling with regret, Amarantha laid down her rod and wound her hands together into one tense shape. “What would you like to be, then?”</p><p>Rue regretted her words, even more now that Amarantha watched her hopeful. And she hadn’t thought this far ahead. Perhaps she, Rue the nearly grown, didn’t hold as much responsibility as she thought. “I— This place will need a tinctorer. Won’t it?”</p><p>“I suppose so! To try all this new soil around us and guide the farmers. Hold on, though, you’re here minding your mother? Without the rest of the Tennels, for the time being?”</p><p>Until this branch of the Tennel family line sorted out what they were going to make of themselves, the Aloftway home would have only two living in it. Rue nodded.</p><p>“That’s a brave effort. Very brave …” Amarantha squinted thoughtful; portent gathered in the air. “Do you mind going out alone? Down a forest path, let’s say?”</p><p>“No,” Rue ventured. “Not for a small while.”</p><p>“And you can run, can’t you? I’m sure you can, you look fit enough. Here.” Amarantha came closer and put fingers under Rue’s chin, and flicked gaze over her, and reached under Rue’s tunic collar to pinch her shell edge.</p><p>“I had pain in my legs last Phoenixmonth,” Rue said, holding herself still and straight. “We thought it might be a demon, but it was only growing aches.”</p><p>“That’s normal enough, dear. Yes, you look to be in the bloom of health.” Amarantha stepped back. Her hands drifted in the air, unsure again now that they weren’t busy. “Well then, let me offer you this, Rue: we’ll know who to ask if we need a tinctorer. But with the larger portion of your time, I’d like you to forage. Out in the forest, for food plants.”</p><p>That thought hadn’t even occurred to Rue, the possibility of searching all over the mountainside. Like the hardiest of aemet folk did. Like Father did on his days of great, brave wanderlust. “Truly?”</p><p>“"The greatest boon of a mountain community," Amarantha said, “is the bounty great Verdana hides for us. Mustard, camellia, vernevis lichen: they’re all mountain plants that shelter themselves in high-flung crannies. And you'll surely find some of your namesake growing up here! We're glad for your tinctoring, Rue. Please don’t get that thought muddied. It’s a fine job to have. But, ah. If someone as blessed as yourself would find the courage to go out foraging, well, then perhaps Aloftway will be even more blessed.”</p><p>Rue’s tongue stuck inside her mouth. She could imagine herself walking alone, with the same purpose and clear mind that Senford Wennering did. Father had found a trove of tinctoria lichen up here in these trees, enough to supply the Tennels with tinctor dye for abundant months. He had found fern shoots and hazelnuts and good, fallen maple wood: it was enough potential to make a new village seem within reach.</p><p>“If you’re worried for your safety,” Amarantha added hurried, “don’t be. Do you know why we named the place Aloftway? Oh, here — you should see this.”</p><p>With a beckoning hand, Amarantha led the way outside. Rue had a bare-sketched idea of why this village earned its name, but she still followed.</p><p>Wind always moved: that was a truth as plan as sky and earth. Wind travelled in currents, in wide gatherings that flowed where they wished to go, slipping past other wind currents like neighbours passing. Rue followed Amarantha toward the soaring mountaintop and into a steep valley, between rock faces. This place didn't feel like a plain fact: more like chaos. Wind jostled between the ragged cliffs, surging through holes in the rock, parting around the maples and dandelions clinging to sand. This was the source of the oddness Rue had felt in the street, the air mislayered far above in a way she couldn’t define. Here, the wind knotted around itself and carried the dandelions’ seeds, the pale tufts held spinning in the darkening air.</p><p>“Ah, here we are. Remarkable, isn’t it?” Amarantha turned a smile to her, tight with nerves. “Your father came upon this place. He thought that anywhere the dandelions danced like this, it must be a place decked with luck. And he told me that’s what stayed in his mind and made him ask folk to start a village with him. I still can’t quite believe we’re here, in clean honesty!”</p><p>In this place of calm chaos, plants held firm, their seeds twirling and drifting with all the ease of festival dancers. Rue supposed there was a certain wonder about it. She couldn’t help pushing her airsense farther, up to the tiered edges of the cliff face. Knobby shapes gripped the rocks, shapes she joyfully knew to be tinctoria lichen. She sensed one soft-edged dandelion seed wedged in a crevice, drifted there after gods only knew how much dancing.</p><p>“Well, Rue?”</p><p>Amarantha shifted. Darkcasting beat down and the thought of foraging seemed like a newly cleared path. Young korvi wandered from their homes, finding their way among strange winds. Surely a young aemet could try it, too.</p><p>“The only favour I’ll ask is that you try foraging for a few days,” Amarantha said. “See how it suits you. Ah, would that be all right?”</p><p>“That’s fine,” Rue said.</p><p>She felt a glow, the mage’s approval warm against her skin. And under the crowded sky, she could sense possibility.</p><p>When Rue arrived home, she found Mother sitting side by side with a ferrin. That fellow with slate-grey fur and black tips on his stubby ears: Rue couldn’t recall his name but she had noticed his profile in the old village street before.</p><p>“Denelend is going to help us unpack,” Mother said, fond as fire warmth. “And he'll be staying with us, in all likelihood.</p><p>She must have appreciated the company, Rue thought. Small though they were, ferrin had a way of filling a home up with life. She gave her open palm to Denelend to shake between his small, sure hands; he gave his full name as Enver Denelend, call him Denelend, and then lolloped back to Mother’s side. Elova Tennel had a ferrin friend already, one who drifted near her like a vigilant aide. So much was new in this place, and it was all tied tight with responsibility.</p><p>Dinner sat like a slab in Rue’s innards. She considered talking to Amarantha about her concerns, and threw away the idea. She watched Denelend telling a gesture-peppered story to Mother; it was an echo of a far-off town whose family had scattered.</p><p>After long moments wasted, Rue walked alone to the windy valley. Dandelion seeds still spun in the wind and light, catching the rich violet of nighttime. Behind Rue, Aloftway was a newly smelted mess still cooling and fitting together. The air here felt like a tunic too large and no amount of good luck would fix that. But the responsible thing to do was try. Rue knew there was potential on Surgings Mountain, growing or drifting or maybe buried in the sand. So she was going to think for herself and try, she thought sure. Like a brave young korvi, she would wander to find a path. One that led where she liked.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Rue spent a handful of days in the mage home, with Amarantha’s bent-edged parchment sheets spread before her. The shapes of goddess Verdana’s plants were a subject that could be taught without explaining; Amarantha’s ink drawings looked nearly like the silhouettes of real, living plants. Flat markings couldn’t teach her the round shape of a living plant, or the texture of its surfaces against the breeze, but Rue felt three-quarters sure her eyesight would be enough. She copied the drawings, scratching her mimicries into the dirt floor of the mage home. Amarantha told her the names to accompany each one — and so Rue knew this mountain’s herbs and sprouts before she ever saw them. Despite the length of those days, she couldn’t bring herself to dislike the studying.</p><p>Whenever she could, Rue turned her attention past Amarantha and her warm-voiced assistant. Past the walls and toward the sky, to the winds tying knots above the trees. If she paid mind, she might airsense the exact moment a korvi arrived — or many korvi, dozens of them. All the folk Father must have spoken with in his past eightdays of travel. But there was only ever wind.</p><p>On the fifth morning in Aloftway, Rue sensed movement. But at ground level: another caravan outside, stirring dust upward. Rue opened the Tennel home curtain to see a handful of neighbours passing by on the now-emptied horse carts, transporting mostly air.</p><p>“They’re … going back?” Rue asked Mother.</p><p>“The Melwids did want their horses brought back,” Mother said. She came to the door to peer out, leaning on the door pole. “They weren't gifted to us, only lent. The farm folk have a few fields cleared and some manure to turn under — so we don’t have much more reason to hold the horses here, in truth.”</p><p>Behind them both, Denelend looked away from the washcloth and breakfast bowls, canting his head. “We don’t? I thought there was plenty a horse could help with.”</p><p>“Oh, there is. But they need to eat. Have you seen how much a horse eats, dear?”</p><p>“I haven’t actually watched one eat,” Denelend admitted. “But it’s a lot, right?”</p><p>“It’s a quantity we can’t grow on the first year’s planting. Likely not the second, either. Perhaps in time.” Mother smiled — a strange motion, stretched on her face — and touched Rue’s shoulder before she turned away.</p><p><span class="u">Perhaps in time</span>, Mother said. <span class="u">Perhaps with luck</span> was her unspoken meaning, the same verse she had chanted since Rue was small. She couldn’t have meant Rue’s personal storm cloud of luck: even a lucky or talented aemet couldn't plantcast enough to harvest daily. There was a legend like that, about plants leaping skyward with one flick of an aemet's hands — but Rue hadn’t believed that even in her haze of childhood memory.</p><p>Perhaps Rue’s luck was meant to filter outward, to wick through the air and the soil and in that way help the village. It was still foolish, she thought. In her own thoughts and her own heart, she was free to find it foolish. But this ungarnished truth wouldn't give people hope. If Rue the tinctoring girl was called lucky, that idea at least calmed smiles onto other aemets’ faces.</p><p>So Rue stood there conspicuous in the street air, noticed and waved at by the departing neighbours.</p><p>“Wish us luck,” one called.</p><p>She jerked her hand upward to wave and hoped that was answer enough. A final cart passed by and it was the only cart with cargo inside: a dozen maple saplings laid together, their roots bundled in damp cloth, their crowns of leaves shivering with the cart wheels’ vibrations. Those trees — uprooted with love and respect, but uprooted just the same — would find new homes in Ordiny town. There, they would grow tall and straight, and there Rue’s sisters could look on them. Rue's sisters, the ones who stayed sensibly rooted.</p><p>The cart shapes trickled away down the mountain path, until the shivering maple leaves blurred from airsense. Rue wondered when she would see a horse again, a creature as common to town life as a horse.</p><p>Her thoughts resisted studying that day, like a green branch bent against its growth. She just couldn’t dismiss the knowledge that Aloftway village was a lucky, destined place of opportunities, and yet they couldn’t even feed a few horses. Every household had brought pouches and sacks of dried food with them; Rue had airsensed those burdens lifted off the carts, filled with shifting multitudes of kernels and granules. But Aloftway's farmers couldn’t be sure of replacing that. Not in the first year, maybe not the second. Presumably, they would scrape up enough forest edibles to make a meal each day. How could folk be glad for this? Their Aloftway life seemed sewn together with too thin a thread: Rue could see that and she was still learning what responsibility <span class="u">was</span>.</p><p>Judellie came that evening, with a bundle of firewood. Gathered from the forest around the village, snapped off cleaner than a fallen branch would look. Goddess Verdana didn't particularly mind when korvi people did that, as near as Rue could tell. She wanted to ask Judellie for advice, for a teaching tale about how to have courage, but there was an enormity of air between them. Judellie gave her a smiling glance and some wood for the hearth, and she left, carrying the bundle with a dragonkind ease of strength.</p><p>With another day and a rough burst of focus, Rue managed to draw all the leaf shapes she had learned thus far: the mustard and camellia and vernevis lichen Amarantha had talked about, and every other plant Rue had ever heard of a person eating. Amarantha looked at the scratched dirt floor and beamed satisfied.</p><p>“Fine work, Rue. I think you’re ready to begin foraging — ah, if that’s still all right by your measure.”</p><p>“We need the food, don’t we?”</p><p>Blinking, Amarantha hesitated for one wrong instant. She said, “Er, ah. Yes. We do, actually. But it’s not too pressing. There’s grain for many stewpots to come, and sister plants are growing in our gardens! And you won’t be the only forager — I’ll be sure of that.”</p><p>Dried corn and a few garden herbs, and whatever could be gathered from the mountainside. That would feed over a hundred people until trade trickled in. In that case, Rue supposed, at least there were plenty of good reasons she fit the task. She got to her feet, and returned the stack of symbol-covered parchments to the assistant Brenne's sure hands.</p><p>“I’ll begin tomorrow,” Rue said. “And I’ll give my best effort.”</p><p>Amarantha smiled wide. “I don’t doubt it at all.”</p><p>Rue slept uneasy, her dreams a creaking bridge across the purple-lit night. The broodery floated forward in her thoughts — the Ordiny broodery, with brambles and oak trunks standing together in a thick wall. With all the other aemet children a gathered, fidgeting presence, standing a stone's throw across the clearing. Rue had her set of foursticks to play with: reed stems dyed with tinctoria, their slender shapes turning between her fingers and making squares on the dirt. Father came to see her. That part was remembered truth. Judellie came and asked to play foursticks: that part was only a dream. After all the shifting and shuffling of feathers Judellie had done on the caravan, Rue couldn’t imagine her choosing to sit and play such a motionless game.</p><p>At first bright, Rue rose and dressed with smooth motions, not stirring enough air to disturb Mother, staying quiet enough that Denelend’s ears didn’t twitch. With an empty pouch in hand, she walked northeast and left the village behind. Walked away until the dandelion valley’s wind was a vague mass in her airsense, a remnant in the air above the trees. Rue focused on the air nearest to her — the air immediately surrounding her sensitive antennae, the air outlining the plants Rue brushed past, with their textures of leaf and bark and catkin.</p><p><span class="u">Bring back as much plant food as you can</span>, Amarantha’s voice echoed in Rue’s head. <span class="u">Ah, with as little harm as possible, that is. And always keep alert. Keep yourself safe.</span></p><p>She hadn’t said one word about testing the soil. Which seemed like a gaping omission to Rue. Crop fields were to be monitored careful, but yet the town’s surroundings were as mysterious as a wrapped gift. Rue Tennel could use as many of her advantages as possible to bring back food. A pouch full of found greens would need to replace forethought, she knew with a grey twist of her mouth.</p><p>As the brightcasting morning shone clearer, more voices began chattering. Larks singing. Firejays arguing with hoarse cries. Squirrels scolding everything that moved. A pealing, warbling song, maybe from a glorywren. Insect wings churned the air and furred bodies hopped between branches, multitudes of creatures all small enough to fit in Rue’s cupped hands. Something with a quivering nose watched her and then bounded away through into a waggling patch of ferns — a rabbit. Far off in the mountain peaks, a croaking song echoed, likely one of the mountain wyverns folk described soaring, searching for carrion. In a way, Rue wasn’t alone in the slightest, despite the lack of people. Perhaps other aemets were scared of walking by themselves because they let their own fears tell them tales. Some folk just didn’t bother to look for answers before deciding there weren’t any.</p><p>Rue paused on a patch of untouched forest floor — and it was quieter, suddenly, without the crunch of her own shoefalls. She knelt and pushed leaf litter aside, collapsing layers of tree sheddings, freeing damp motes of air. No one had fussed over this spot before, not even Mother or Father. It was new ground to try. Rue unrolled her tinctoring kit and she was filled with peace for the first time in weeks. She spooned soil into her white-painted testing tray and began the observing and stirring and measuring of dyes, that Tennel family sort of ordinary.</p><p>She had expected the mountain soil to be modest — not the finest place to grow greenery, since it wasn’t a low-lying field with manure dumped deliberately on it. But this earth was made of more than weak sand sand — obviously enough, since a forest of trees had managed to grow three times Rue’s height. The soil sample sloshed in dyed water, dark granules in a liquid turned flower-petal pink. That meant acidity. But apart from being mildly acidic, Rue couldn’t fault this particular spot; the soil had body and moisture fit to support a strong plant’s roots. Casting her eyes around, there were rock-studded spots and bare patches, and places the Great Gem couldn’t force its light to the ground. Quite a patched blanket of growing conditions. Marking down some picture-notes was a fine idea, Rue assured herself. She could gather knowledge for herself, if she tried.</p><p>After wetting the ink stick on her inner cheek, Rue put steady hand to her spare scrap of parchment and she drew. A tall slope represented Surgings Mountain. With the smallest dots she could, she marked Aloftway village’s boxy homes, and then this place — higher up, north-easterly. Three dots for decent soil; a sharp-cornered triangle for acidity. That would be enough to prod Rue’s memory. Here was one fraction of the forest examined and understood, and all it took was a brief moment no one would miss. As Rue rolled her map and tools and her wiped-clean testing tray, she carefully believed that she making a wise bargain.</p><p>Foragers visited this mountainside, but clearly not often. Steps away, Rue found fern shoots still pale and coiled enough to be edible. And she took more steps to find more familiar plant shapes: rapunzel, and managrass, and a dozen other kinds of greens growing scattered over crests and valleys. Rue nipped each of them off with her newest tool — the little harvesting knife, hooked like an aemet fingernail.</p><p>“Thank you, sister,” Rue said with each cut. She wondered whether great Verdana actually listened to such token words, and supposed the answer didn’t matter. Each cut stem received a spark of plantcasting, a shared mote of lifestrength from Rue's cupped palm. Cut edges healed in the time it took to breathe; each plant stretched a knucklewidth taller and then she stopped to save her strength. With good growing conditions, there would be more food to harvest in a few days’ time.</p><p>The job was time-consuming one, Rue found, but not terribly strenuous so long as she paced herself. After a few handfuls of greens gathered, she unrolled her map and drew a few more symbols onto it, this time the tiny shapes of leaves. More memory markers for later.</p><p>The forage pouch gradually filled. Rue even found a trove of round, brown mushrooms in a crevice full of soil — and it was rich soil, surely from the remains of a sizeable animal. Some deer or fjord horse that gave itself back to the earth. The thought wasn’t as awful as Rue expected: after all, she only saw soil and a white spot that was possibly bone, or possibly only a rock.</p><p>Walking back, she realized that this day might be called lucky. Rue had found a bounty of wild food provided by the plant goddess; she had tried out a task she wouldn’t mind doing again; she hadn’t sensed so much as a hair of anything dangerous. The day had gone over like a well-made wager. She paused near the hazel trees that marked the west edge of the village. Inside her pouch were some leaves of rue, a shape buried by the other greens but well-rooted in Rue’s thoughts. Anyone else in Aloftway might have found these plants and brought them home — but it was lucky Rue who carried the bulging pouch back. Folk would notice the foraging she had done and not even consider the myriad places Rue had looked for them, the methodical effort made.</p><p>She knew as soon as she set foot in the Aloftway street; this was a threshhold she crossed. This was another moment where imagined luck would would be piled onto Rue Tennel's back. New path, same sights. She pushed her feet toward the mage home, and murmured greetings to neighbour folk — the ones lingering by the chromepiece, their attention dragged into the mage home as though stuck to Rue’s pouch, stuck like burs.</p><p>It wasn’t entirely bad, Rue told herself while Amarantha accepted the pouch. This was a path to follow. Rue was getting what she wanted, in a way.</p><p>“Lucky, indeed,” Amarantha breathed.</p><p>Those stems and leaves made meals for a dozen people. Rue’s found mushrooms were the flavouring for that month’s Middling dinner, the savoury-rich morsels everyone noticed in their root stew.</p><p>And then neighbours began asking for her. Other aemets foraged, with their whole days or simply with their free moments — but when a particular food was craved, or when Amarantha wanted valerian stems for her nerves, Rue’s name sprang from people’s mouths. Due to her luck. Always her luck. Never the moments she spent walking and searching, mixing soil and water and dye, carefully remembering the resulting colours. Folk didn’t even think to credit the simple act of leaving the house and searching for things. But in this small village perched on a mountainside, it didn’t matter why Rue succeeded in finding food: it only mattered that she did. Not one traveller had arrived in these first months, not one korvi drifting in the mountain wind.</p><p>Mother cooked a barleycake for dinner one night, the first she had cooked in well over a year. Familiar-looking foraged nettles wilted on top of it, relaxing into the upward-pouring heat.</p><p>“I thought it would be a fine change to have a barleycake,” Mother said, smiling. She passed a bowl to Denelend, telling him, “It’s a Tennel tradition, of sorts. Usually topped with shaved green peas but we haven’t got any of those.”</p><p>“You didn’t tire yourself,” Rue asked, “did you?”</p><p>“Oh, not at all. Judellie ground the barley.”</p><p>“And she brought a firewood chunk for the hearth,” Denelend added. “And she found a pan under all the other kitchen things.”</p><p>“I did invite her for dinner,” Mother said. Her smile faded slight. “Ah, but she must be busy.”</p><p>Perhaps Judellie had more practice living in a place like this, one with new needs and new troubles settling in like mould spores. Rue hadn’t seen that red-feathered friend for more than a handful of moments strung together — and she had barely met the second korvi, Giosso, long enough to say hello. A new village had plenty of lifting and digging and building to be done, best aided by korvi folk too generous to say no.</p><p>Denelend gulped his mouthful, and said, “We’ve got some fine plans for the Middling Circle.”</p><p>Turning her gaze to Mother, Rue said, “You’re rooting yourself to that?”</p><p>Cutting her barleycake with her spoon, Mother hummed a happy answer. “Since I finished tinctoring all the fields already, I don’t think there’s much point holding onto that vision of Elova Tennel. Why be the tinctorer if that’s not where my time goes? Or where my heart is anymore, really. Minding the Middling circle is something I’ve always hoped to do.”</p><p>Rue tried to smile supportive and couldn’t make the motion show properly. Thinking of the strong-willed korvi folk had been pleasant and she found herself reluctant to leave the idea; Mother was thinking of mistier things, luck and providence and the plant goddess’s regard. Nothing a tinctorer's dye could measure.</p><p>“Then,” Rue said, “I hope it suits you, Mother.”</p><p>“I’ll even practice my singing.” Warm creases formed around her eyes. “You can look after the Tennel tinctoring, dear. I’m sure you’ll manage it wonderfully.”</p><p>Rue imagined so, too. She had never had a reason to doubt her skill passed down a long line of grandmothers and cousins, held by all the Tennel women. Awareness of dye tints — hundreds of slight colours — was more than she could ever put words to. But Aloftway didn’t need the constant aid of a tinctorer. Rue could close that box lid, keep that one skill in her heart’s pantry and go off foraging for more. She could claim a new skill as hers. Maybe mastery of foraging. Or something else she might find if she kept walking out into the unknown.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Two more years passed, marked by the hundreds of forage pouches Rue brought back to share. It was a fine supplement to the crops, folk said. If only the careful-tilled fields would hold water better. There had to be something loose under this mountain’s soil veneer, perhaps a gravel bed that strained moisture away — and Rue didn’t covet the thought of being a farmer, guessing at the ways of the local water. She couldn't even explain the creek water leaping from its deep crevice, pure and rushing day after day. Some riddles did need the gods to explain them.</p><p>One aemet wanderer visited Aloftway, on a scattered handful of occasions. An odd fellow with a twitch in his gestures, and always a pouch full of salt and flour to trade. His tunic was dyed rosy with plum-root; the sight dragged Rue’s thoughts back to Ordiny town, back to a time she had stood looking up at this same wanderer while he told a tale of Cicada the Legend Creature granting him luck.</p><p>Amarantha and her assistant Brenne were always glad to see that fellow. There still weren’t any merchant korvi, no momentous landings in the street.</p><p>Garden plots gathered between the homes. Mint bushes grew, and onions, and tall stands of nettles. Mother had taken loving responsibility of the Middling circle but all the garden trimmings went for farmers' mulch instead: with apologies murmured to goddess Verdana, folk brought token handfuls of brown leaves to the Middling circle.</p><p>During that mild-strained time, Rue reached her adult height: she looked a fraction downward to meet Mother's eyes now. Her shell spread and settled, shifting from layered plates into one smooth dome down her back. And she cultured a quicker walking pace, a firmer confidence in the never-silent forest. Rue could safely name herself a forager now, for whatever that was worth.</p><p>“You’re doing more than I could ever ask, Rue,” Amarantha said one day. She held that day's surrendered forage pouch, clutching it like a gift too rare to open. “I should call you an aide more than a forager. Mage’s aide.”</p><p>There was a sad sheen in this mage’s eyes that made Rue take pause. And there was a portent in the air that etched the moment into her memory, the way Amarantha had no more to add and simply turned away.</p><p>The Barmond family made more parchment for Rue, tanning rabbit hide soft enough to roll. She redrew her maps larger, clearer, with more symbols packed in; she hadn’t thought her hand was accurate enough to draw leaves so tiny but it was a gift worth keeping. After scraping and testing so many patches of ground, the eastern forest turned familiar, a patchwork of dye-coloured results behind Rue’s eyes when she looked at the leaf litter.</p><p>And without her burden of tinctoring, Elova Tennel crouched in the town Middling circle for long hours, minding the ceremonial stones and tending the piles of rotting plant trimmings. It was a task held in the heart of any village — and not one that demanded speed or endurance. Mother didn't mind the token leaf offerings, either. <span class="u">The crops need what they need</span>, she said. Rue tried to see the warmest side of the situation whenever she returned to an empty home, to Mother still off in a hallowed circle. She gave foodstuff to Denelend to cook, and carved a fallen maple branch into a long-handled spoon to aid his short arms. The strange winds shoved overhead in their own peculiar pattern and Rue walked farther away with each foraging trip.</p><p>In the cool of sowing season, in Rue’s fourteenth year of life, she found a sturdy stick in a cluster of fallen branches. Sturdy enough to be a walking stick. Rue eyed the length of the maple wood. It could help her leap-skip across rocky patches — and, she supposed in an afterthought, she could throw it as a distraction if a hunting beast attacked her. She had sensed forest wolves through the leaves more than once. Creatures like thick-built dogs, their gaze a weight Rue could feel. Because of shapes like that lurking among Verdana’s green, Aloftway’s aemet folk had been speaking more quiet worries in their gossip. The ferrin listened with fret-lowered ears, and brought nuts down whenever they climbed trees.</p><p>But Rue didn’t expect to find any hunting beasts on the north side of the mountain today. Not so soon after the fire. Only a handful of hours ago, flames had risen tall enough to cast hungry light on the mountain spires, hot enough to cleave the sky with roiling heat. Tension hung in Aloftway village, surrounded by more poisonous smoke than anyone could sense the outer edges of.</p><p>Fire became a demon, some folk said, when it grew so large and consumed so much. It became a beast of its own, with whims and desires. Murmurs spread through town as quickly as the smoke did — murmurs saying that if a person listened close, they could hear the demon’s scream through the roar of its flames.</p><p>Rue had sat with Mother and Denelend for a day’s worth of hours. In the smokeless air of the Tennel house — its hearth fire doused — they prepared small pouches of essentials, and imagined how best to run down the mountain’s steep terrain. Mother had prayed out loud to the High Ones, then switched to the haunting loveliness of salvation songs, which had seemed to soothe Denelend a welcome fraction. In the end, the fire shrank and vanished, and they hadn’t needed to flee. It was a gift of fortune, Mother said — not needing to abandon this fresh-built home. Folk mingled in the streets afterward, sharing whispers of relief.</p><p>Setting out into the clear forest air this day, headed for the forest fire's site, Rue thought of legend-told demons. Folk never seemed to say what created a demon, or when the exact point was that a hungry presence was born into the land. There had to be a cause, Rue decided. Some factor that could change fire from a simple element into a thinking force. A person’s casting used with ill intent, perhaps — or, more simply, a fire with too much fuel laid in front of it. She couldn’t imagine where the mind and will of a demon would come from, though. Fire was lively but it wasn’t truly alive — not even when it came from a person’s inner casting. So maybe there wasn’t any life in a rogue forest fire at all. If Rue heard about a forest-fire demon from a performing bard, or a messenger korvi repeating distant news, Rue would have felt sure that the threat was explainable in plain terms: it was likely alive only in people’s fearful minds.</p><p>She reached the place where she had picked arnica blossoms an eightday ago, where she had paused to listen to wolves' howling. It was a dry-edged glade then, but not anymore; now it was an expanse of rocky soil topped thick with ashes, broken by the jagged black circles of tree trunks. Like a hearth pit covering whole acres of this rocky land. Rue caught herself looking for marks in the ashes —gouges, perhaps, like a clawed demon might rake across the mountainside — and she tightened her mouth. This wasn’t why Rue the forager had come. Prodding herself to perform the mage’s request, she took in a breath, and she spoke.</p><p>“Great Ones, we will hold these sister trees in our hearts. And, ah, all of their cousin plants, as well. May good things come from these ashes.”</p><p>That felt like all the points Amarantha had wanted her to cover, all the funeral words appropriate for fellow plantcasting life. The air hung around Rue, a limp lack of answer. She kept walking, imprinting her boots’ soles into the ashes, and began to scout the site. If Rue kept her eyes sharp, she might learn. Like always, she might be the first person — or the only person — who took notice of this spot on Surgings Mountain.</p><p>The north-western field edge showed plainly why the fire had stopped: a deep crevice cut through the bedrock, with the majority of wind currents pushing toward it. Only a few sparks had managed to blow across the gap, enough to burn black-edged holes into the woodbine and sumac leaves. Rue plucked the burned leaves and extended plantcasting, urging fresh leaf buds to swirl larger; the burned leaves would do more good for the soil than they would withering on the plant. Rue carried on.</p><p>The western and southern field edges told her precious little. She tinctored in five places and found nothing more helpful than the soil quality — alkaline, of course, as burned land always was. She found animal tracks stitching across the ash drifts, more than she would have guessed. Why would a creature come back to a place it had fled from? Rue crouched over a paw print — as large as her palm and studded with claws, likely a wolf print — and couldn’t guess what worth the creature had seen in this devastated place.</p><p>Rue stood. And she felt an eight-way pull in her bones, a feeling that she wasn’t finished here but she didn’t know where to turn next. She minded the wind, sensing the currents tracing around her own body and filling the space between the trees. The winds told her nothing. Shoving her tinctoring kit back into her pocket, Rue followed the final, eastern edge of the ash field, planning to turn toward home.</p><p>Then, in the ash-caked grass, she sensed a shape among the bushes — the curve of an aemet’s face. Another step and she saw that face, with skin as green as hers. It laid still against the ground.</p><p>Rue’s breath stopped. This person was a torn mess, shreds of fabric and flesh in a lake of darkened ash. And this person didn’t move. No swell of breathing in between shell and chest — none, no life, just wind shifting their short-cropped hair. Senses sharp beyond her hammering pulse, Rue took steps closer. It was an aemet man. She couldn’t tell much else, with his body carved down to the bones, his face buried in knifegrass. He was caught by a hunting beast, said a distant, calm thought — but Rue’s panicking heart only saw his lack of antennae, the awful lack of arches because they had been snapped off, and under his chin was the wriggling motion of a ropeworm come to feed—</p><p>Rue was running, the trees streaking past. She slowed her strides. She caught gulps of breath. This was no time for blind panic, she scolded herself. No more running. Her blood shrieked and her aemet instinct still wanted to flee from the danger, away to wherever the winds led but that would be no help at all. Sensing the forest as far as her airsense would reach — quiet leaves, no menace to be found — Rue turned back. She straightened. And she pushed back toward the dead fellow, one step after another on legs as thin as water.</p><p>Back to the torn fellow lying in dark clumps of ash. This time, Rue looked anywhere but his face. Under the blood stains — blue-black, as dry as resin— was a tunic Rue had seen before. Shredded to rags but it was still clearly pink. Plum-root pink. It tugged her memory: plum-root fabric at Rue’s eye level and a story of the Cicada's sparkling wings. The fellow was that odd wanderer, who must have been headed toward Aloftway.</p><p>She still thrummed with flight urge but Rue wasn’t about to run, not while she moved her gaze ginger over this still man. She couldn’t recall his name — only that he was son to some soapmakers and he had once filled two whole pouches with waterpepper, all forgive him for bragging. Now he was part of the mountainside. Not truly a person anymore; he was spent remains, he was memories. He was one of those aemet wanderers who went somewhere alone and never returned.</p><p>Rue needed to take another action. She stood there, blank and white inside, remembering what her task was. And with doubt still binding her thoughts, Rue picked up a char-touched branch and laid it across the man. Then another. Then she went to the unburned forest, found sticks and leaf mulch, and piece by piece she covered the fellowkind stranger. She had already given a funeral rite for the trees, she thought. A person deserved some notice, too. Even if she hadn’t known him.</p><p>Then she stood staring at the mound she had made, still seeing and sensing the savaged remains underneath. Rue had never spoken at a funeral before — never even said last words for a killed tree before this day — but she patched together what words she could remember.</p><p>“Gods watch …” She didn’t know his name. Or his family house, or where he had lived. “This fellow. May he … May he find better luck with Verdana.”</p><p>Better luck. The thought rankled her as always, but she also thought of the day-coloured blooms of dandelions. Aemet folk were supposed to be laid to rest with a flower in their hands — not that Rue had a shroud cloth to do a proper job of laying him to rest. She likely didn’t have the steel nerve, either: she hadn’t been able to look at this scene without her aemet instincts swallowing her. And she hadn’t even recalled funeral procedures in the proper order once she dragged herself back. But Rue supposed she ought to keep trying. She walked again, and found a dandelion bobbing in breeze. Carrying the blossom back by its oozing stem, she laid it on top of the mound. Rue hoped she had made these gestures near enough or right enough. Dandelion petals faced the sky, bright-coloured and mute.</p><p>A dandelion, folk said, would bring luck to this passing spirit. He would be given the speed and grace he had lacked when hunting beasts caught him, and he would fly into the beyond like a tufted seed. Into some indescribable state where Verdana soothed and guarded whatever was left of a person once their mind and heart were gone. Rue couldn’t think any of her usual pointed thoughts right now; she only felt that the rites were a balm, a kindness even if they made little real sense.</p><p>Wiping her hands on her leggings, smudging away the dandelion sap, Rue headed away into trees. She had news to fetch back to the mage, and foraged food to locate before she could face any of that.</p><p>After a blur of snipped food stems, Rue returned to the Aloftway street. One neighbour passed her by, holding a tincture bottle; another shrugged aside his front door curtain with herb leaves in hand. To cure away the smoke they had breathed, Rue supposed— or to settle their nerves. The Memweather family carried water pails together and they glanced at Rue, wanting to ask about the smoke, or the scare, or the altered lay of the mountain. Each of them thought better and, with amiable smiles, carried on.</p><p>After another tonic recipient left Amarantha’s home, it was Rue’s turn to enter. She removed long branches careful from her pouch — wilted, but not beyond saving — and she made her report:</p><p>“Firstly, it’s getting difficult to find valerian growing wild, so I brought you some to grow.”</p><p>“Ah,” Amarantha said with a distance in her eyes. She might well have forgotten that she asked Rue for valerian; she had been forgetting a lot of things, of late. She took the leafy cuttings in gentle-cupped hands. “We’ll make good use of it. Thank you, Rue.”</p><p>Assistant Brenne came to Amarantha’s side, with concern on her fruit-round face. “Here,” she said, “allow me.”</p><p>Amarantha laid the valerian stems in Brenne’s offered hand, and swept back to the hearth to sit over a steaming pot.</p><p>This wasn’t a strange scene. Brenne was surely more than an assistant now, said a sureness in Rue’s bones. She could be called a mageling, with all the knowledge and favour she had received in this home, the months of watching a mage work. Rue shot Brenne a brow-raised look.</p><p>“Not doing well, lately,” Brenne murmured, low enough to be ignored. She touched her short, loose hair with a thoughtless motion. “We do ask a great much out of her. I’ll make sure these stems get rooted in garden soil — don’t fret, Rue.”</p><p>Fretting didn’t get anything done, but it certainly stole time and drained morale.</p><p>“You checked the fire’s source,” Amarantha suddenly asked. “Ah, isn’t that right?”</p><p>Dread sank teeth into Rue’s heart. She had nothing to panic about, she told herself stern: no one could sense the shape of her thoughts.</p><p>“I did check,” she said. “The fire has definitely died now. No embers anywhere, and the ashes are cool. It stopped at a crevice too deep to cross.”</p><p>“There.” Brenne spoke sure, like calming them all from a nightmare. “One fewer thing to fear, thanks to Fyrian.”</p><p>Fire god Fyrian didn’t wish ill on anyone; his element was simply reckless at times, hungry enough to need hearth stones confining it.</p><p>Hunger drove creatures to do terrible things. Like chasing other creatures, killing them savagely and chewing them down to their bones. Flight terror echoed in Rue’s blood: she needed to tell Amarantha and Brenne about the things she saw in the ash field. Her village needed to know about that unfortunate forager and whatever had gnawed him, but Rue didn’t know any more than one sight she had seen and the guesses she made. She shouldn’t have buried him, said a qualm in her heart. She might have overlooked some telltale sign. And someone might want that aemet buried near his actual home.</p><p>Brenne came to Rue’s side with a clay cup full of steaming tea. “Rest for an eightmoment, dear. You’ve well earned it.”</p><p>The steam poured gently upward. Rue took the cup, its lacquer smooth under her fingers. “Thank you. I wouldn’t mind gathering my thoughts.”</p><p>Brenne smiled, like she would at any other daughter.</p><p>The three of them sat in warm quiet. Amarantha worked with her mortar and pestle, scraping stems to pulp and staring somewhere beyond it. Brenne layered wet cotton and Middling circle soil around the valerian stems' cut ends. Her plantcasting glowed in gentle bursts; she paused often to watch Amarantha’s working hands.</p><p>And Rue couldn’t speak. She held a warning inside her and couldn’t push it past the fear in her throat, the dry-crusted memory. She was scared to speak. She felt the consuming fear of finding that man and she was too young to do anything but want to run.</p><p>No more stalling. Her wants didn’t matter. She took a breath that felt significant, and she readied words, and in that same moment her courage withered as air parted outside — around a fast-loping korvi. A familiar shape hurrying to the mage home's door, yanking Amarantha and Brenne’s attention.</p><p>“Terrible news,” Judellie said, pushing the door curtain aside. She was a maelstrom walking in, air disturbed around her, her wings mantled like she wanted to fly. “We found Flerring. He’s— He’s dead. It was wolves.”</p><p>Guilt stabbed Rue — but the man she found hadn’t looked like her neighbour Flerring at all. She couldn’t have forgotten folk in her panic, could she?</p><p>“Oh,” Amarantha breathed, hands rising to her mouth. “Gods help us.”</p><p>Brenne hesitated, watching Amarantha's motion, then asked, “Wolves? You’re sure?”</p><p>“I chased them away myself.” Judellie shot a look to Rue — worry, apology and request all melded. Then, to the mages, she said, “You should come out and calm folk. Please.”</p><p>“Certainly,” Brenne said instantly. She rose, dropping the valerian stems into a water bucket, evidently not caring if her wrapping job fell apart. “Amarantha?”</p><p>Unfolding her hand from around the pestle — like it took strength to move herself, like she was as frail as Mother — Amarantha left her work. She opened her lips and closed them again, eyes slowly focusing on this moment. “Y-Yes. We’ll see to it.”</p><p>“That is, if you think you can …” With a pointless tugging at her tunic, Brenne turned eyes to Rue. “And I think I’d like your maps at hand. Come with us, if you would.“</p><p>Rue wanted to blurt about the other dead aemet man, her wretched memory buried under fresh news. There were two dead folk today, two tragedies combining to a greater fear in Aloftway village. Father was out wandering somewhere, in a land not fully safe.</p><p>Rue got to her own leaden feet, and said, “Of course,” and followed her elders into the wind-blown street.</p><p>Flerring Barmond had been gathering fallen bark for his leathercuring, Judellie reported while the four of them walked. It was a common enough task for him, foraging for Verdana’s gifts, walking down the mountain’s slope at a westward slant. But an odd sound had caught the ears of an Aloftway ferrin — a stretched sound, he said, like a distant shout.</p><p>"By the time I found Flerring," Judellie said bitter, “the beasts had him. He had already passed.”</p><p>Village folk huddled at the edge of town now, aemets standing as near the forest as they dared, ferrin at their sides with ears raised alert. Mother stood with Denelend, her poise strong and fearful. Soil’s dampness still clung to her laced fingertips.</p><p>“Oh, good,” she said as Rue approached. “I was thinking of you out in the forest, my dear.” With a faltering smile, she said, “Gods give you luck. Be safe.”</p><p>“I’ll try,” Rue said.</p><p>“And I think you should bring Denelend.” She looked to the friend at her feet. “If that’s all right by you.”</p><p>“I wouldn’t mind,” Denelend said. He joined the mage-led group, lolloping on four paws to keep up. “I could cast some bright light for you, if you need it,” he offered, his whiskered face turned up toward them.</p><p>“Yes,” Brenne said, “that might be useful.”</p><p>They followed Judellie’s plumed back through the dense-huddled clumps of trees, through winding ways that might be paths someday. Footsteps crunched in time, a medley of aemet shoes and korvi claws and ferrin footsteps nearly too light to be heard.</p><p>“He is here, up ahead,” Judellie said, glancing past her folded wing. “This is an ugly picture. Be ready.”</p><p>In this heavy treeshade was a copy of the scene Rue saw in the ash field: the curve of an aemet’s neck standing stark, with dark blotches of blood on stones. Rue felt a vestige of her previous terror, a weak echo of flight-fear washing through her innards. Another aemet man was torn apart and facing the soil, but friends stood close enough to give her aemet senses a source of strength.</p><p>“I saw three wolves,” Judellie said, accent harsh in her words. “There might have been more close by, I don’t know.” She waved clawtips toward the ground, with its smeared leaf litter and indents from clawed paws.</p><p>“Oh, poor Flerring.” Brenne was quiver-voiced and wide-eyed for a fleeting moment. She went to her villager’s remains on careful feet, and knelt, and laid fingertips on him — testing his lack of life, making solid sure there was nothing she could do. “Well, now. When has a wolf ever done this to our kind? Rue, have you been to this nook of the woods before? Have any of you?”</p><p>Judellie and Denelend said nothing, shaking their heads. Amarantha was as still as an old tree, staring. In the sucking quiet, Rue remembered her maps and fumbled for them — since she suspected she knew the answer, but needed to see her own notations first.</p><p>“I don’t forage the southern slopes much," she said, “but I’ve been here a few times.” She ran a nailpoint over her ink markings. “The soil is fair for growing in. A slight bit acidic. I’m not sure what that would matter to wolves …”</p><p>“It would matter for food, yes? Plant-eating creatures would come here if the ground grows plants.” Judellie narrowed her eyes at the forest distance. “That looks like a creatures’ trail there.”</p><p>Denelend went to a viburna tree and, with three leaps and scrabbling claws, he climbed onto a branch. He lit up first with his innate ferrin electricasting — threads of white lightning through his dark fur — then with a powerfully yellow brightcasting that made him glow like a paper lantern. Light painted the ground and the tops of fallen leaves — surely helpful for Judellie, who had no airsense, just keen dragon eyes.</p><p>“More wolf tracks,” she said, pointing at illuminated hollows in the leaf litter. “A pack must have come here.” Judellie held her tailtip off the ground and placed her feet careful, following alongside the wolf trail. Her bird-shaped feet left prints barely larger than the wolves’; her toeclaws caught the brightcasting light. “What if the wolves were waiting here in the shade to strike a creature? Anything or anyone that came here?”</p><p>Brenne examined the tracks, too, minding her wood-soled shoes. “I don’t see any plant-kin tracks … Not freshly made, anypace. What could they have been hoping to hunt? A deer that hasn’t been here for an eightday?” She glanced to Amarantha.</p><p>The mage still had nothing to say — she wasn’t even watching this discussion, instead laying a pocket-cloth over Flerring’s face. Her mouth was a tight-tied knot.</p><p>“Well …” Brenne paused, and then her voice came stronger. She looked more like a mage than ever, a leader and caretaker for all. “Maybe the wolves chose this, and maybe they didn’t. They could have made a mistake. I don’t rightly know. The core of the matter is that wolves took an aemet life today and that’s not how things are meant to be.”</p><p>It wasn’t how the gods had laid out the land, if legends all grew from truth. Peoplekinds lived together in towns and families and clans, using their thoughts and talents to weave a greater, stronger whole. It was why groups meant safety, because no food creature gathered together quite the way aemets, korvi and ferrin did. All creatures knew the unsaid rules: people and their settlements were to be left unbothered, and creatures’ homes would remain spread far and free. All of that felt sure to Rue’s thoughts. Life obeyed its axioms and flowed on a natural current of sense; no aemet would be urged to take up foraging if they were at constant risk.</p><p>But something sat wrong today, and flowed backward, and did truly feel like a mistake. Two somethings, in fact. Fear rushed up Rue’s throat and trickled down the inside of her shell; she recalled the dead forager in the burned field, this exact aching sensation of the land seeming worse now. She ought to tell her village leaders. She looked to Brenne.</p><p>“Maybe these wolves are just dizzied, if they’ve have never had aemetkind living so close by,” Brenne wondered. “No one has built homes on Surgings Mountain in our grandfolk’s memory. But that still—“</p><p>Then Amarantha ran — in a rush of swinging limbs through the air, a body’s passage away into the shadowed trail air. Something must have frightened her, some threat in motion.</p><p>“Amar—?!” Brenne cried, her head whipping, the curve of her face pointing the way Amarantha had gone.</p><p>Rue pushed her airsense out past this gathering, out farther into the gathered trees and branches. No foreign bodies broke the air around them. Judellie bristled, her claws curled ready, fire heat rising in her throat; above her, bright-glowing Denelend shivered to the tips of every hair. And the only other movement was wind between plants, murmuring sadness.</p><p>Brenne sighed, a gust breaking the tense air. “The poor dear. Her nerves … Denelend? Catch up with her, if you would?”</p><p>Before she finished the request, Denelend nodded and was leaping branch to branch, his yellow light sinking away into the treetops.</p><p>With regretful looks to one another, Brenne, Judellie and Rue left Flerring where he had fallen, and they followed Denelend’s bright beacon. Not far up the path, they met more aemet folk: the Barmond family, their courage gathered to come see their son’s remains. They had caught their fleeing mage, instead, and laid kind hands on her shoulders.</p><p>With Brenne and the village folk already gathered, it was quick enough to arrange a burial. Rue paid mind to the proper funeral ways, correcting herself on each detail.</p><p>Flerring received a bluetop flower in his hands to mark the eighth of the month. It mattered which day of the month he had passed on, in the same superficial way that the colour of betweenkind blood mattered. He held a dandelion, too, for freedom. His shroud wrapped four times. Then he was laid a moment’s walk from the village — well away from where he had been killed, and under a layer of moss-touched rocks. Only when folk made a calm, standing ring did Brenne begin to speak about the deceased.</p><p>Judellie stood outside the of the funeral group, facing the forest with stony eyes. So did Giosso, the other korvi, still wearing his beekeeper’s leather garb. Denelend sat on a tree branch, and so did a dozen other ferrin with ears high and noses testing the air. Aloftway had guardians — as though the threat still loomed, like the wolves might show themselves again.</p><p>They might, Rue knew. Once was an accident; twice was far worse.</p><p>“May our friend have better luck wherever the wind takes him,” Brenne concluded. She must have sensed the strangeness in the air: she stared at the stone pile for one long heartbeat, and she pressed her mouth like swallowing a fear.</p><p>Mother watched from Rue’s side. She had been the one to pick Flerring’s dandelion flower from the windy, cliff-flanked valley. She had likely healed that plant back to a bud-topped stem, and thanked Verdana graciously for it. Now, she laid a hand on Rue’s arm like hoping her daughter wouldn’t blow away.</p><p>Hunting beasts stalked the mountain forests. That was a truth as simple as earth and air, but now it was a chill presence soaking the minds of everyone in Aloftway. Senford Wennering had spoken of green forest and clear air and fine chances, but not of anything this grim.</p><p>Rue kept silent; she overheard bites of conversation while the town walked home together.</p><p>“What a fright,” a neighbour said, with a hand to her mouth to blunt her words’ airshapes. “Do you think …?”</p><p>Her friend answered something frightened and beige.</p><p>“Well, with that fire and now dear Flerring, and— Giosso, what did you say the wind was like? Up high in the air?”</p><p>Giosso resettled his wings, over and over so his flight quills shuffled. “Ehm. Ever since I first flew here, I’ve thought that the wind seems like a great creature trying to swat me from the sky. That’s just my pinch of salt, though.”</p><p>Rue’s innards sank. A few coincidences could seem like a decisive gesture of fate, if a person couldn’t see why it all happened. It could seem like the gods themselves speaking warnings to their children. Rue could suddenly sense what her betweenkind kin were thinking, and how this day would send a bolt of fear through them. Strange winds, and poor harvest and fire, and now death striking from neverwhere: for all those things to happen, Aloftway must have poor fortune. A bad luck demon stalking their forests and unsettling their skies. It would be even poorer luck if <span class="u">two</span> folk had died — why, one of them wasn’t even from Aloftway. He was only a wanderer-by who brought them much-needed trade goods, who had stepped into this mire.</p><p>Father wasn’t sense-blind. He must have felt all this churning air and seen how lonely this new life could be. If only he had thought longer on it, Rue thought. Made more bargains, gathered more supplies. If only he had as much wisdom as courage.</p><p><span class="u">I’ll find something</span>, he had said before he left. That night, he was shadowed by warm firelight and he looked tall and strong as an oak tree. <span class="u">We’ve got a hundred folk who want to break new soil, why shouldn’t there be a few more?</span></p><p>It was as good a reasoning as any, small Rue had thought, sitting across from Lavender with a half-played game of foursticks between them. She had turned back to the game's logical rules, and ignored the unease in her bones.</p><p>Maybe it took some long-thought worry to become a grown woman.</p><p>“I think we’ll need more herbs,” Brenne told Rue quietly, as they two regrouped outside the mage home. “To bolster us, especially Amarantha. Would you see what you can find tomorrow, Rue? Near the village, that is. You don’t need to go far …”</p><p>The next-door neighbour approached, listening, and she added, “I’ll trade for any good fern shoots you find while you’re out walking.”</p><p>If Aloftway’s residents became too frightened to go afield, then there would be a shift in the way responsibility was carried. Rue might carry more of it. Rue the lucky one, named after hope and goddess gift. She stifled the frown she wanted to wear, and gave her fellow aemets a nod. The neighbour smiled grateful and left.</p><p>Alone now with the two leaders, Rue had a confession to make, the weight of a found body still on her conscience. She gathered herself again to speak, but Brenne was heading through the mage home’s curtain and fixing on Amarantha, the small, seated bundle in her own home.</p><p>“Amarantha?” Brenne spoke small. “Are you …?”</p><p>“Apologies,” Amarantha said. She put down her clutched cup of water but pulled her blanket tighter, tucking it like knotting herself in. “I shouldn’t have fled.”</p><p>“It’s a natural enough want.” Shifting on her feet, Brenne made a choice and went to a sitting cushion. “But we need to calm our village folk. Sit if you’d like to, Rue, I think you can help us sort this trouble out — but keep it quiet as a cotton boll, all right?”</p><p>With words sticking in her throat, Rue nodded.</p><p>Facing Amarantha, Brenne went on, “I’m sure a few folk will want exodus — and if we don’t pick a sure course, they might run off fear-blind without us. But we’re just getting roots down here …”</p><p>“Senford has never failed me before.” Amarantha murmured. She gazed into the depths of the hearth, into the fading embers wrapped in ash. “And even if he does, something will watch over us.”</p><p>“Oh, I’m sure the Great Ones will. Or did you mean guard creatures …?”</p><p>Amarantha paused. “I suppose both would be a wise choice. Until Senford finds some folk …”</p><p>“Guard creatures are a good idea, actually. I’ve heard that they do wonders to raise a town’s spirits. Chakdaws? No, they frighten like any bird. Dogs? Would your breeder friend in Wanderwhen …?”</p><p>Amarantha wound her hands together. The shadows gathered in lines around her mouth, and between her drawing brows. “He owes my family line a great debt. Those are the very words he told me: a great debt. If I asked, I’m sure …”</p><p>“I think the safety of our village is a fine way to use that,” Brenne said soft. “We can erase that favour owed and turn it into an asset, yes? If you and yours are safe …”</p><p>Brenne shifted like shovelled sand. Something dreadful had befallen Amarantha’s husband in misty years past; Aloftway folk always stopped their gossip short when they approached that sore fact. Like the man’s memory itself had been laid to rest, decked with fears, surrounded by imagined demons. Rue’s will to speak went limp and she sat, useless.</p><p>There would be dogs in Aloftway, Brenne decided, and Amarantha agreed in a whisper. A handful of stout dogs to guard aemetkind among their sister trees. They talked while Rue relived the muteness of childhood, listening to the particulars of trade goods and game meat, and what would become of Aloftway in the fear-touched air.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mother slept poorly that night. Rue sensed her rustling throughout the purple-lit hours, and rustling about some more while sorting dried herbs in the muddy dawn light. Denelend was still a tight-curled ball beside Mother’s bed, in his sleeping nest that looked like a dropped heap of laundry.</p><p>“Pardon me, dear,” Mother said, gentle among the hush. “We haven’t got any rosehips, have we?”</p><p>Rue turned over on her bed mat, moving a fraction nearer. “No. No one has any, I asked yesterday.”</p><p>Mother hummed a sad note, and picked some other dry leaf to put in her empty cup. “I’m going to the Middling circle today. I’m sure I’ll be there until darkfall.”</p><p>“That’s good,” Rue said. If Mother didn’t have the comfort of her entire family in this upturned place, she could at least be close to goddess Verdana, with Denelend nearby. Mother hated to be alone. She never spoke as much, but Rue knew it like she knew the shape of the sky.</p><p>“It’s beginning to look like a proper Middling circle,” Mother added. “Denelend is helping me bring in some rocks, he’s got a fine trick of putting rocks on some sackcloth so he can drag them. We’ll smooth out the circle, and widen it so the Creature statues have enough air.” She paused. She ran one curved thumbnail over a lump in the cup’s paint. “I dreamt of your father again …”</p><p>They hadn’t shared a room with Father in years — years since Father and Lavender cooked dinner together, and Mother held the new child Avens — and the realization stung Rue’s heart. It had been so long since Father promised to return. To remedy it, Rue pictured the sight of Senford Wennering walking into town, finding gardens grown and fields planted, smiling fit to crinkle his eyes. There might even be korvi friends behind him, strong dragon folk with matching smiles just like he had been seeking. It was a clear-painted scene after so many times imagined; Rue had simply never happened to dream about it.</p><p>“Was he doing well?” Rue asked.</p><p>“Plenty well! He brought us thistle flowers in a pouch, and a broom made of korvi feathers, all different colours. They must have come from twenty people’s wings if a single one. Senford said that our new friends are moulting right now, but as soon as they can fly, they’ll be here in Aloftway. Lavender and Avens were going to come, too.” Mother smiled at the air. “Then your father asked me where partridge sleep when it rains. I’m not sure that part of the dream meant anything.”</p><p>“We’ll have to ask him, when we see him.” Rue couldn’t help her smile. In fairness, she didn’t know where partridge sheltered from the rain, so it was a worthwhile question. “Thistle flowers in his pouch, you said? You should grow thistle greens today.”</p><p>“I was planning on it! Don’t worry — I won’t strain myself. My plantcasting is as fine as ever.”</p><p>Mother walked on halting steps to the hearth, and she eased, crouching, toward the tamped soil. With flint and steel, she set about lighting the hearth to boil water with and she asked, thoughtlessly mild, if Rue would like tea, too. However fragile her flesh was, Mother still had benevolence to share and a heart overflowing with greenery. There was enough soil here to plant her family in, if they should ever arrive.</p><p>Leaving the home, Rue couldn’t wipe the image of Father from her mind. Appearing over the crest of the mountain trail, walking into the Aloftway he had planted in new soil. He would be wearing his travelling pouch tied to his back, maybe tapping a melody on his tonebox to make the journey less lonely. <span class="u">Nothing to be afraid of</span>, he memory-said.</p><p>Rue was imagining something that she couldn’t see or sense. Something she couldn’t prove. The worst menace she faced was the phantoms in her senses, the half-truths people frightened themselves with — aemet people worst of all. Rue foraged alone through the mountain forests and that could be dangerous, true, but the clear fact was that she had lost her nerve and failed to speak about the dead man she buried. Recalling his still shape opened up the fear back up; the memory of Flerring came close behind, the scab formed by a night’s sleep now torn away. Rue had held back her knowledge even while Aloftway’s leaders sat trying to piece together a decision. This was cowardice, she spat at herself. She needed courage if she wanted to walk her own path, or any path worth bothering with.</p><p>At this hour, the mage home laid at rest. Under its dawn-lit roof thatch, Rue sensed two folk breathing even and undisturbed. This wasn’t worth waking Brenne or Amarantha, she knew with a red itch of frustration. They would have plenty to deal with when they did wake. Rue stood there, alone under the treetops and the vastness of sky — churning sky that filled the windy valley and touched its lichen-growing cliff walls. Rue could think of worse ways to spend her time than on a familiar lichen. She headed there.</p><p>The walls of the dandelion valley grew tinctoria, a colony of grey clumps holding tight to bare slate. With the overwhelming wind, and the masses of dandelions and dancing seeds, most folk likely didn’t even notice such a small, drab plant kin. Tinctoria was one more supply to be foraged by anyone paying attention. Placing her shoes careful, managing not to crush any dandelion leaves, Rue climbed the staggered ledges of the cliff wall. The wind swallowed her with each step upward, stirring her antennae against her braided hair and smearing the shapes around her. Farther up, there felt to be some hole in the cliff face that funnelled the wind, but focusing on it would be a bout of nausea Rue truly didn’t need.</p><p>Standing there half-blind and balanced, Rue pulled her harvesting knife from her pocket, pushing a tied scrap of cloth off the thumb-length blade. The knobbed, grey arms of tinctoria waited before her.</p><p>Long ago, when the peoplekinds had just picked their casting elements and the land teemed with life, an algae and a mushroom grew together on a mountainside. They were the closest of friends, and they wound together so tightly that they became one lichen. It was tinctoria, and it liked the mountain air. It spread dozens of smooth branches and it thrived.</p><p>And then the Legend Creature Mandragora, the great plant-being, floated by on the wind. A powerful skygust caught its wing-like leaves and the Mandragora fell toward the mountain. It might have been battered over every rock in creation if it hadn’t caught hold of the tinctoria’s branches.</p><p>The Mandragora smiled wide at the tinctoria, giving thanks in its own silent way.</p><p>The tinctoria told it hello and welcome. It didn’t get many visitors. Would the Mandragora care to hear a tale of clouds and light?</p><p>Being a lover of stories, the Mandragora did want to hear that tale. It held tight to the tinctoria's branches and it was storied, a fine tale of the winds’ travels and the light’s dancing on clouds. The tale went on for years but Mandragora and the tinctoria were fed by the rain and the Great Gem's light. And as the tinctoria grew, it stretched its branches into different shape, creating knobs for the Mandragora to grip.</p><p>When the tale was finally done, the Mandragora grinned wider than ever. It had a precious knowledge of this mountain and sky, as if it had grown on a mountain itself. In exchange, the Mandragora plucked one of its own many-coloured petals, and wrung out hues out for the tinctoria to keep.</p><p>Since then, tinctoria lichens held secret colours inside their grey, knobby branches. And when they wished to tell stories, the colours could help them speak.</p><p>The bulk of that legend, the whole-woven presence of it, swam in Rue’s awareness while she cut branches off. For all the years she could remember, she had doubted that the tinctoria actually told a story: plants had a casting essence like any living thing but they certainly didn’t have the physical means to speak words. Maybe the tinctoria legend made no sense but Rue liked it anypace, the thought that the Tennel family’s dye lichen had wisdom to share.</p><p>She cut away enough branches to fill a tunic pocket, then laid her palm over the tinctoria and cast on its wounds. It was a two-souled plant, this blend of algae and mushroom, but both essences grew at her urging. Rue began the climb down, hoping the wind-blown unease in her innards would fade once she returned to the village. The daybright grew stronger and now, surely, Rue could speak her own ghastly story to the mages.</p><p>Neighbours gathered at the chromepiece today, discussing which shade of daylight would bring them greatest safety venturing into the forest. They wished Rue luck while she passed.</p><p>And within the mage home, Brenne and Amarantha were more than awake. Worry charged the air, like an eddy in the wake of the well-wishes outside.</p><p>“Good day, dear,” Brenne wished her. She asked needful questions with her eyes and said only, “Little has changed since yesterday, I fear. But if you need Giosso, he’s off flying a message for us. He’ll be gone for the day.”</p><p>“That’s fine,” Rue said.</p><p>Brenne hummed thoughtful. “Do you need …?” She drifted toward the simmering water pail, a shadow of offering Rue some tea.</p><p>Rue did need, she told herself. Needed to get her secret out before it grew comfortable inside her, accustomed to shelter. Rue Tennel was old enough to be held accountable; her mind was sound enough to be sure.</p><p>Before the flight-fear could seize her again, she spoke. “I found a fellow the other day. When I was checking the ash field. He— He was our kind. And torn up the same way Flerring was.”</p><p>Amarantha and Brenne wore matching blank faces, the bloodlessness that came before understanding.</p><p><span class="u">Another</span>, Amarantha said without sound, only with fearful-shaped air.</p><p>“Who was it, dear,” Brenne asked small.</p><p>“I don’t know. I mean that— I didn’t know at first, I’ve seen him but I don't know his name—” Rue hated her tumbling voice, hated the crushing speed of her thoughts and the hammering of her heart. “What I mean is, he was— He was that forager fellow who visited here, and he visited Ordiny, too, you recall? He said he found waterpepper. I think he was from a soapmaking family.”</p><p>“Oh. Was he the young fellow …?” Brenne turned questioning eyes to Amarantha.</p><p>“From Hillcrest? That seems likely,” Amarantha said. “All that travelling about he did … If you’ll pardon me, I need a moment.” She turned her unseeing eyes to the wood board wall.</p><p>“The poor friend,” Brenne said. She sat uneasy, like Amarantha’s quiet was a hole some guidance words should have filled. “Brave of him to journey here as many times as he did. Do we need to go see to him?”</p><p>“I gave him rights as best I could. I had already done them for the burnt trees, so I thought …”</p><p>“Bless you, Rue. And bless all of us — great green, what are we to do now?” Brenne folded her hands over the back of her neck, like a second shell. “He took the trouble to visit us and now this. Our first visitor, and he and Flerring were taken by forest wolves, both! A strange thing is only strange once, you know. Twice and it’s not strange anymore.” With barest pause, and a glance at Amarantha, Brenne decided, “We’ll send word, I suppose, next time anyone travels. Tell Hillcrest the sad news. And we’ll clearly have to ensure some protection for our own selves, may Giosso have good winds right now.”</p><p>“Dogs?” Rue asked. It sounded like a cumbersome solution, with all the frowned concerns she had overheard yesterday.</p><p>“That seems best,” Brenne said, nodding. “They fare well in the treeshade.”</p><p>“We could take exodus?” Rue’s base instincts wanted that, uneasily — more uneasily at the thought of Mother walking so painstakingly.</p><p>Brenne winced sympathetic. “You’re not the first to say that. But no. This has been a frightful few days, say that again because it’s true. But abandoning what we’ve built here …” She shook her head slow. “I can’t order that in good conscience. We’ve all worked hard, we’ve only just got the beans growing in a regular cycle. Senford saw potential here — and you’ve found some of it growing, haven’t you, Rue? Let’s see if we can stand against this demon. If we bring in some otherkind friends, we might just scare it off.”</p><p>Brenne was right. Exodus was what aemet folk did in the face of known demons — like gripthia sickness, or others that could swallow a village whole. Something that could pass through bramble thorns and sure-tied house boards. Aloftway had smaller troubles than that. Plenty of them, but still small enough troubles to face.</p><p>“Refusing to run scared,” Rue said. “I think my father would like that.”</p><p>With her wan smile growing, Brenne said, “He would, indeed. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we got word from him today?”</p><p>It would, Rue thought. Quiet squirmed between them. With a murmured word to excuse herself, Amarantha left the home, air stirring and settling behind her. In the stillness left behind, Rue turned her eyes to the dirt floor.</p><p>“I don’t know why I didn’t tell you earlier,” she murmured. “About the fellow I found.” The memory of being scared was a pain in her chest, a putrid hollow where her responsibility should have been.</p><p>“That’s all right, dear.” Brenne moved to the woodpile, rearranging it for no clear reason. “It’s frightful to face these things, sometimes. And, well, Amarantha and myself nearly decided not to do anything about this, but we thought of how fruitful your courage has been. I suppose we three were meant to help each other.”</p><p>Lack of action was the real demon in this weak-rooted town. If folk always balked like startled deer, they would just allow the entire land to pass them by. Someone needed to scrape up the courage to act; Rue held that truth within her, sore and glad for it.</p><p>“Truthfully,” Brenne added, “Mara is— Pardon me. Amarantha is probably spending time right now gathering her courage. Out in that odd valley with the dandelion seeds. So it’s not always about jumping to action, isn’t that right? We’ll make an announcement later, once we’ve picked this village’s path. We'll manage, Rue. Just see about those herbs, if you would.”</p><p>After that, Rue spent two hours journeying downhill to the lowland slopes. Trees grew sparser there but with thriving crowns of leaves, and clusters of mint, rue and valerian at their feet.</p><p>Rue harvested quickly. Her thanks to the cut plant stems was barely audible even to her own ears. Thoughts of two aemets face-down in the forest kept surfacing; her airsense pulled toward the steep distance separating her from the movement of other people. It wasn’t a smart wager to come here alone, said her rising instinct, arguing against the plain fact that Rue was gathering the herbs her community needed.</p><p>This situation — the gathering fear every time an aemet left home, the wariness brought by every unfamiliar shadow — would grow sicker before it healed. Rue couldn’t say why she knew that. It was simply a knowledge steeped into her thoughts. Which was foolish in itself, because she had no proof Aloftway’s lot in life wouldn’t be better from this moment on; she had never heard of an entire town circled by wolves before. Assuming that times would get worse was no better than assuming Rue Tennel had luck because of her name.</p><p>She had growing yet to do. Everyone did, it seemed. Rue paused from tying her pouch strings around curative leaves, and tucking extra into her tunic pockets, and she watched the sky full of wind. She needed a clearer sense of what was true and what was myth. If anyone wanted to truly live, they needed to be able to see.</p><p>Rue made the hike back minding her pouch full of tender leaves. She wondered whether to save a handful of valerian for Mother — to bring her restful sleep — and soon the Aloftway street spread out in her airsense. Two footsteps later, Rue knew the size of the gathering. A dozens-wide collection of Aloftway folk stood all together. Rue hurried her feet and joined the throng, facing the tunic-clad backs of aemet neighbours; the ferrin beside them glanced to Rue, offering flicked ears and brief smiles.</p><p>“—And that should be enough to pay him with. Once our new pups arrive,” Amarantha said, a wisp of voice from the front of the mass, “myself and Brenne will allot them to folk. These dogs will be the guardians Aloftway needs. In troubled times, when unknown danger stalks folk through the leaves, aemetkind had never regretted keeping dogs nearby.”</p><p>Silence grew. Amarantha had no more to say. With a motion like grass tops following wind, all of Aloftway turned their eyes a fraction rightward, to Brenne standing sure-rooted by Amarantha’s side.</p><p>“Our good friend Giosso is travelling today," Brenne added, “to speak with a dog breeder. So we hope to have aid soon. Some companion creatures with strong hearts and sharp teeth, you see. Any of you who know how to tie a snare, we ask you to help trap small creatures. Rabbits, cliffbirds, lizards — anything. Each one caught will save Aloftway a food pigeon. Gods know we don’t have many to spare yet.”</p><p>Murmuring flitted through the crowd. Rue picked out Judellie’s warm voice, agreeing to break small creatures’ necks if anyone was queasy to do it themselves.</p><p>“But,” Brenne added, “We leaders of Aloftway aren’t asking you to take risks. Do your walking in groups if you can, and stay vigilant. Aemetkind, mind your airsense and be ready to run. Verdana is with you. Ferrinkind, keep to the trees.”</p><p>This danger was to be weathered, Brenne was saying. If Rue had been asked to forage when she wasn’t yet grown, maybe others could find the strength to defy their aemet natures, too. Grey doubt filled her heart.</p><p>“Rue,” Brenne called, as the gathered village dispersed. She beckoned. “Come here, if you would. We’ve got a task for you.”</p><p>Rue looked to Amarantha without thinking. But Amarantha didn’t look back. She watched the ground, empty of whatever leaderly essence she had addressed her village with. Drained like that neighbour woman in Ordiny who had plantcast too ambitiously on her raspberry canes.</p><p>Laying a hand on Amarantha’s shell, Brenne turned a sad-washed face to Rue. “This is mine to say, too, hmm? Well, Rue, we’d like you to go find a wandering friend. Ah … <span class="u">Friend</span> might be too nice a word.”</p><p>Rue couldn’t help the raise of her brows.</p><p>“He’s a korvi. Felixi of Velgarro. An odd fellow, though. He doesn’t land in towns and isn’t much fond of trading, it seems. But he hunts wild quarry — and I’m told he’s gifted at what he does.”</p><p>“That fellow Shika met …?”</p><p>“He’s the one, yes.”</p><p>One day last year, there had been good meat for the stewpots and good bones for enriching gardens. All thanks to Shika, a ferrin neighbour who had gone on a wandering journey through Surgings’ trees. She had met a korvi in a clearing, while he cleaned a fresh-killed deer. The korvi was a hunter, an odd and untalkative fellow, but Shika had run home with all her lightning quickness and found some pouchful of things to bargain with by the time the deer was rendered into its pieces. Shika was well praised that day, and everyone ate hearty that night.</p><p>At the time, Rue had wondered why the hunter hadn’t visited Aloftway himself, if he had a surplus he was willing to trade. He had been busy with other responsibilities, perhaps. Then she had all but discarded the thought, deciding what to add to the meat to make a meal of it. For everyone to receive a fist-size lump of food, Shika must have found it challenging carrying her bargain home.</p><p>“That fellow never traded with anyone again, though,” Rue ventured. “Isn’t that right?”</p><p>“No,” Brenne agreed. “He didn’t. Shika said something about the good Velgarro disliking company. Which is odd as a two-legged stool, I have to say, but he must have his own rhythms… Shika says she’s watched for him and seen him passing overhead since. Same place she first found him. But he’s just flown right onward.”</p><p>Like he hadn't wanted to trade in the first place. Rue frowned. Why would another attempt to trade with him fare any better?</p><p>“If we’re going to keep dogs,” Brenne went on, “we’ll need meat to feed them with. More than a few pigeons and snared things.”</p><p>“So,” Rue said. She put fingertips to her forehead. “I need to negotiate with a wandering stranger who likely doesn’t want to talk at all?”</p><p>Brenne took a halting breath. “I thought your luck might be a help. And strike me for my honesty, but when Shika talked with the Velgarro, she, ah. May have been overly energetic with him. I wasn’t there but I suspect he didn’t take a shine to her. Or to her bringing Rinner with her on her return trip.”</p><p>"She brought...?" Brought another ferrin friend to see a fellow who didn't want company: that would be another hope-laced effort that an Aloftway resident hadn’t thought through carefully enough.</p><p>“I'm sure you can see what I'm aiming at, here. When you’re out, Rue? Please seek Felixi. If he’ll speak to you, ask him if he’d reconsider trading with us — regularly, and for anything this village might provide him. If he seems tempted, add more to the offer.”</p><p>Enormity weighed here — that sense that Rue’s luck was a beacon to her kind. Some beacon powerful enough to summon a lost opportunity.</p><p>“I’ll search for him,” Rue sighed. “I … suppose it’s worth trying. Where did Shika sight him last?”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It turned out to be a clearing Rue knew well — northeast of the village, past a stand of straggly hawthorns. She knew the feel of that clearing’s air even while Brenne described it. The clearing grew polegrass and strong-scented flowers, plenty to stuff mattresses with; the bluetop flower laid in Flerring’s hands likely came from this place.</p><p>Near the ground, the air was calm here. Updrafts rose unbothered between tree trunks, warm air threading through the tree branches' grasp. Gemlight poured down balmy. If Rue understood the mechanics of winged flight correctly — the way rising air buoyed dragonkind into the sky — then this was a good day for a korvi to be out flying.</p><p>Rue left the tree shadows and walked through the rattling grass, through a patch of polegrass and daisies that bumped against her hips. This meadow really was incongruous to the rest of the mountainside. Rue thought of a street bard she saw once when she was small, a booming-voiced korvi who storied Ordiny's townsfolk. He talked of a lark gathering wildgrass seeds and dropping them from the highest reaches of the sky. It seemed likely enough: this place did look like the daughter of travelling seeds. How unlikely it was for those seeds to land on a favourable patch of soil, though, in the middle of this mountain’s exposed stone and deep crannies. It could be called luck if a person cared to think that.</p><p>Rue stood among shorter knifegrass, her face catching bright gemlight like a leaf’s green curve. The korvi hunter was sighted again and again in this spot, she mused. Fickle as storm wind, maybe, but still regular. There might be an hour of day he preferred. Or a day of the month — gods around, Rue hoped she wouldn't need to stand here waiting over wide-spread <span class="u">days</span>.</p><p>A regular sort of hunter would fly a fixed circuit over the mountain, Rue supposed. That would be a sensible way to cast an eye on animal trails and water sources, and fodder grass like this. At least, it seemed sensible to someone who walked her own circuits and didn't know a whit about flying. She looked over the grass stalks and blossoms, hoping her dun tunic and green skin would stand out enough. Winds shifted overhead while she waited, vast layers in an ever-moving sky. Clouds slid from west to east. A voice wafted in from the forest, a firejay’s repeating yelp. And the grass stood with her, waiting for nothing at all.</p><p>An hour dragged past. Rue sensed shapes on the wind as a bird fluttered its small wings, as a honeybee wafted from flower to flower. Another hour crawled away. Rue checked the meadow over, in case it had managed a trove of food plants she didn’t know about. There was an alfalfa seedling forming its first branches, and a few dandelions pushing their way into the medley. Neither was substantial enough to harvest and Rue didn’t feel a need to exert plantcasting. But she unrolled her map and ink stick, and made two marks that hardly felt worth the effort.</p><p>Near the end of a third hour — when morning turned to afternoon and the daylight turned richly gold — a motion caught Rue’s eyesight. Too far off to know it properly, and Rue scolded herself not to assume a bounty ahead of the harvest. But as she watched the speck gliding through the clouds, she grew more sure. That speck was a korvi on the wind — hopefully the same korvi she was wasting time for.</p><p>Impulse clamouring inside her, Rue raised both arms and waved. If there was a particular wave to call a korvi down from the sky, she wasn’t familiar with it, but her clumsy motion seemed to work. Wheeling on the wind, he sailed lower, circling with his long-jawed face turned toward her. He was yellow-feathered and gold-skinned, that and his white belly blending with the cloud-streaked gold of the sky. Difficult to see unless one was already looking for him. What a useful way for a hunter to be hatched, Rue supposed with a shiver under her shell.</p><p>He circled on unhurried wingbeats and dropped as sudden as a whim, beating air downward before he landed crouching in the meadow grass. Air rushed away and settled.</p><p>This looked like the Felixi of Velgarro in Rue’s imagination. He was thick-built in the shoulders, muscular like a hunter would need to be, his mane feathers long and wild. He straightened from his landing — and he turned stone-hard eyes to Rue.</p><p>His throat moved as though he meant to speak. Nothing came out for an instant; he swallowed, frowned, and tried again. “Something you want?” he asked in a rasping voice.</p><p>Like he hadn’t spoken lately. Like he was a wild creature himself.</p><p>But he was right: Rue bothered him for a reason. “Ah— You might say that. You’re Felixi of Velgarro, aren’t you?”</p><p>“Yes.” He eyed Rue. “And you’re another Aloftway pup asking me to trade, hmm?”</p><p>She blinked; a sensation of skipped pleasantries slid away. “I … yes. Our leaders request your help in hunting wild quarry.”</p><p>“Leaders? I thought you had one mage in your village.”</p><p>The pierce of his gaze made Rue hesitate. It didn’t truly matter whether a community chose a mage full of casting arts, or a clever-tongued leader, or some patchwork of the two; it was was a triviality of words and surely even an odd fellow knew that.</p><p>“It seems to me that we have one mage and one leader,” Rue ventured. “One is better with casting and medicines, and the other is better at talking to folk. Does it matter?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>The hunter didn't visit village folk because he had an arrogant way about him, said Rue's innards in a sour voice. <span class="u">Arrogant</span> wasn’t quite the right word, not an exact match to the korvi standing before her and raising a considering brow. It was possible that Felixi was simply efficient.</p><p>“At any pace,” Rue said, “are you interested in trading what you hunt?”</p><p>“Not particularly.”</p><p>What a nut to crack. “There’s nothing you want? I was told to offer you anything at all the village might provide …”</p><p>“Anything? Well, that’s a mote more interesting than last time.” Felixi hissed a sigh, like chiding himself. Slowly, he placed tailtip to the ground and sat back. “Fine and well, I’ll part with some game meat. You are?”</p><p>"I'm …?"</p><p>Keep up with him, said the proud spark in Rue’s heart. Speak up responsibly.</p><p>“I'm Rue Tennel. Nearest hand to the mage, and a daughter of the tinctoring arts.”</p><p>“Right, then. I’m Felixi of Velgarro, as you already know. Hunter of creatures.” He didn’t flick his wings open, not even a featherwidth. He only nodded. “What has Aloftway got now? No barley, I don’t care for animal feed.”</p><p>“By a chance, we don’t grow any.”</p><p>“Truly a chance?”</p><p>Rue caught her mouth from falling open. “No,” she admitted. “The farming folk just didn’t want to waste their casting on crop that doesn’t care for mountains. But we do grow white beans and spinach, and garden herbs. And I can forage for any particular forest plant you’d like.”</p><p>“Feh,” Felixi huffed, but he paused like thought in the very same breath. Plans formed behind his eyes while they flicked over the meadow grass.</p><p>Rue couldn’t help looking at him in his moment of distraction. Lumps tugged at her airsense — white scars standing off his hide. Thread-wide ones along his shoulders and arms. One lumpy gash under his ribs, and another on his thigh, nearly hidden by pant fabric. He had been injured more than his dragonkind healing could match; he hadn’t gotten any healing casting to knit his wounds, either. His cargo pouch was all but empty, knotted around itself. But his waistband carried a second brown item, one Rue gradually identified as a sheathed knife — the largest she had ever seen. Used on the animals he hunted, maybe. He must have led a frightful life.</p><p>“I’ll take nuts,” Felixi decided. He stiffened at his own words, air sliding under his slight-bristling feathers. “Hazelnuts, chestnuts, acorns, I’m not particular about which kind. Or I'll take honey. Or some preparation of both.”</p><p>“All right, I’ll bring a basket,” Rue said.</p><p>“A half-bushel? I won’t take less.”</p><p>Her insides chilled at the thought of filling it. “Yes … That’s fine. Would a half-bushel be enough for a large creature?”</p><p>“Deer? Nurl? Something else?”</p><p>Did it matter? Deer were bigger, Rue was cautiously sure. “It’s— It’s not important as long as it’s a food creature, I don’t think. We’re expecting new arrivals and they’ll want meat.”</p><p>Felixi tipped his head— but he kept any questions firmly held behind his teeth. “It’ll likely be a nurl. Which’ll take me a day, so count the hours and don’t be late. Until then.”</p><p>And he opened his wings, crouched on powerful legs and tail, and sprang sudden into the air. Felixi of Velgarro was flapping away before Rue could believe her senses.</p><p>She stood there agape in the settling air, sensing the Velgarro’s many-limbed shape disappearing. Definitely a bizarre fellow, too sharp to be called a friend. He stirred a feeling in Rue like large movement among the leaves, a bone-deep wondering if she should flee.</p><p>Turning to the forest, back toward Aloftway, she walked and sorted her thoughts into piles. She supposed the sheer fact of a wild-wandering hunter was unsettling: this was a person who dove onto beasts like a beast himself. It wasn’t natural. Not in Rue’s sense of the term, anypace — where it was fair to raise a food animal and care well for it, in exchange for a peaceful death.</p><p>She had helped Mother clean meat, once, in old Ordiny. They had been gifted a lump of horse meat to be made into an after-Middling stew, and it had put a similar fear in Rue’s belly — the awareness that this moist red mass used to be part of a creature.</p><p>Why was it from a horse, she had asked in small voice?</p><p>This horse got hurt, Mother explained. She picked up a short-bladed knife, looked to the meat and hesitated. It had wrenched its leg and it wouldn’t have lived anypace, so the kindest thing was to release it from pain, then make use of what it left behind.</p><p>Rue had wondered why the horse hadn’t gotten a funeral, like other friends of aemetkind. Horses weren’t a personkind: maybe they had other ways of returning their plant-element spirits to goddess Verdana’s care. Some other path through the whole wide land. Legends swarmed in Rue’s memory, the tales of ancient times and gods deciding what would feed on what.</p><p>She considered asking about it, but Mother was making her uneasy face. The knife parted meat, drawing a wedge of air downward. Lavender’s back was turned, rubbing skins from some oilnuts; Rue was the only one paying mind.</p><p>She could do it, Rue offered. Surely, she thought, the task wasn’t so bad once a person grew used to it.</p><p>Turning a smile toward her, Mother said that would be fine. Here, Rue. It would be a great help if she did.</p><p>That horse, Rue understood as she grew older, had likely been helped to its death by the same friend who fed and groomed it each day. Or at least an odd-job korvi with a friendly temperament. Like how Judellie had taken care of the caravan horse limping too badly to be sent back home.</p><p>That was a far measure away from Felixi of Velgarro, the thorny fellow who dropped out of the sky only to stare. Someone who demanded a bushel of food to even think of helping. That was the crux of it, Rue thought as she paused in the forest: people were able to think about others’ needs. That was a defining quality of people. But Aloftway was asking Felixi for help and he grudged it. He must have had his reasons — but who had reasons so chill, so sharp of tooth?</p><p>Maybe, Rue thought with a swell of embarrassment, she was still too young to be taken seriously. Felixi had long enough horns to be a hundred years old, perhaps more. Whereas Rue still didn’t have the air of aged knowledge that a family leader or a mage would have — and even if she did, aemetkind didn't live more than fifty or fifty-one years. Rue wondered suddenly what Felixi had guessed her age to be, whether he had decided her knowledgeable by any respectable measure.</p><p>Returning focus to the forest around her, Rue bunched her foraging pouch into her hand, and she searched the air for serrated hazelnut leaves. She wouldn’t know the depths of truth today, and not tomorrow, either. But she could keep trying, keep taking steps.</p><p>Rue recalled a few stands of hazelnut bushes. A few more were marked onto her map, among the other plethora of symbols. Still sowing season as it was, most of the bushes hadn’t ripened their nuts yet; Rue put her palms to bark and shared her plantcasting strength before she picked. With her breath coming heavy, she returned home, the carrying pouch weighty in her hands. It felt like less than a half-bushel — in weight and size both — but there would be more time tomorrow.</p><p>She was nearly within sight of the village when a korvishape swooped overhead, a knife-winged bulk cutting past. Rue looked up in time to see a flash of red through the leaves. Evidently, someone had missed her. She smiled and kept on as Judellie flapped loops in the sky overhead, like Rue held her tethered.</p><p>And when the treetops were thin enough, Judellie dropped to earth, fluttering as much as the space allowed, slapping feathers against leaves. “Gods around, I was beginning to think you were lost!”</p><p>“I hope I didn’t trouble you.”</p><p>“No, it wasn’t any trouble. You’ve been working hard?” She waved claws at the bulging pouch.</p><p>“I have. Nuts are the only thing the good Velgarro would trade for.”</p><p>Judellie blew a jet of smoke through her grinning teeth. “He doesn’t sound so good to me.”</p><p>Rue couldn’t help a smile. “You shouldn’t say things like that. Not where folk can hear you, anypace.”</p><p>“It would come out nicer in korvitongue!”</p><p>The tongue might be worthwhile for Rue to learn sometime. An aemet could never speak it clearly, but thinking in playful barbs sounded worthwhile.</p><p>“I’ll need your help tomorrow, if that's all right. He’ll bring a nurl for us and I don’t think I can carry that by myself.”</p><p>“No, likely not. I’ll be ready,” Judellie said. She turned a clay-warm eye to Rue. “You should have someone with you when you go into the forest anypace, I think …”</p><p>Rue let out a hard gust of breath. “Do you mean the wolves? Really, Judellie. Foraging can continue as long as we’re all careful. What will happen to this place if everyone is scared to set foot outside their homes?”</p><p>“We’ll all mold away inside,” Judellie replied. She smiled, canting her head. “You take after your father, you know.”</p><p>That was the last comment Rue had expected in this moment, and it stung her heart. “You think that?”</p><p>“Oh, very much. If he was here, he would be telling us to have courage and fix things. It’s why this village—“ and Judellie waved a hand at the buildings ahead, “—is here at all. I wouldn’t be here if Senford hadn’t talked about it like a sensible idea.”</p><p>Rue noted the street around her, checking for eyes aimed toward them or aemets holding their heads still to read the air. No one seemed to pay them mind. A farmer and carpenter stood together in tight-strung discussion, not seeming to mind their airsense; a ferrin lolloped out one home's door and into another.</p><p>“Do you think,” Rue asked Judellie quiet, “that this was actually a good idea?”</p><p>“What is?”</p><p>“All of … this.”</p><p>“This village?” Judellie rubbed her braided feathers against the lizard curve of her neck. “It’s … Mmm. Full of spirit. So I think that makes it good. No one made a better life by sitting and waiting, you see?”</p><p>Which was exactly what aemet folk did in troubled times. They airsensed the forest filling with smoke while sitting in their homes, or they idly hoped for visiting allies. Aemets just hunkered in place and hoped for fortune to fall from the rainclouds — or else they ran, panic-blind and hoping for nothing.</p><p>“So, keep following your father’s guide and you’ll be good for this place,” Judellie added, with an encouraging flash of teeth.</p><p>Rue had, it seemed, chosen the right portion of her family line to take after. She had received more Wennering blood than Tennel, maybe; there had to be some flesh-borne difference between Lavender who said prayers and Rue who thought questions. And which one was Avens? That child would be in the Ordiny broodery at this moment, learning songs and legends. Barely remembering the still air gathered around her mother, not knowing the frequency of Elova's reverent silences among Verdana’s leaves.</p><p>Rue turned her gaze to the ground. “My father’s guide … I wish he were here to give me guidance. But I’ll try.”</p><p>They neared the Tennel home’s front curtain; Judellie was regarding her. Rue knew the expression even before she looked, the same soft-glowing thought as the day they met.</p><p>“You’re doing fine, Rue. I would not change anything. And if your father doesn’t show up soon, I will find him and drag him here so he can see.”</p><p>The image — of Judellie flapping, dragging the wanderer Senford by one ankle — sent a bubble of a laugh up Rue’s throat.</p><p>“Thank you,” she told Judellie. Not just for the compliment, but for sparking an idea.</p><p>Amarantha and Brenne listened careful to Rue's repeated facts, the terms laid down with their too-sharp Velgarro acquaintance.</p><p>“I wasn’t sure he’d agree to speak with you at all,” Brenne confessed. “It's a small gift, hmm? Just keep offering, Rue. Keep him trading. We’ll need him.”</p><p>Amarantha watched them both, and had nothing helpful to add.</p><p>Once dusk fell, Rue had time to give to her sparked idea. She dug a pouchful of salt from the Tennel home’s pantry box, and tucked a half-flask of Giosso’s honey under her arm. She would do well to follow Father’s guide; when he wanted something, he talked folk into cooperating. He pointed out the favourable aspects of the deal, or added another kind gift in a breeze-easy tone. If Senford were here, he would know exactly what to offer Felixi of Velgarro — and Senford’s daughter could follow his guide.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The next day, as the right hour drew near, Rue went to the meeting place. She stepped out of the trees’ shade, set her half-bushel basket in the grass, and began watching the sky.</p><p>This time, only an eightmoment passed before Felixi of Velgarro appeared in the air. Under his rapid-beating wings, he held a bulk with dangling legs. A slaughtered creature. A completely uncovered slaughtered creature. Rue stood watching, eyes riveted wide while Felixi dropped hard to earth and set down the lifeless body of a throat-cut nurl, its eyes fixed open.</p><p>“Rue,” Felixi said with a nod. His voice came cleanly — like he had been speaking already today.</p><p>She couldn’t drag her airsense away from the nurl’s body, the short fur and the long mane crest bowing to the breeze. Flat teeth showed in an open-bleating mouth.</p><p>“Ah, you couldn’t have wrapped it in something,” Rue asked.</p><p>“That wasn’t part of the bargain.”</p><p>Foolish of her to think that all dispatched animals came with a cloth wrapping to veil their truth — or that Felixi would care for that sort of nicety. Rue swallowed; her nerves seemed to slide down her throat, as well. “Fair enough. Now … Ah.”</p><p>Her voice thudded in the quiet air. Felixi pulled a cloth scrap from his pants waistband and, with movements smooth as water, he wiped blood from his palms. Red disappeared from his yellow hide, stroke by stroke.</p><p>"I don't think I can carry it myself,” Rue said.</p><p>“That’s a wretched trick. Wretched because it's obvious, I mean.” He folded the bloodied cloth, and lanced her with his eyes. “I don’t take carrying errands, and I’m not about to walk into your village.”</p><p>Who refused to go to a village? No one Rue had ever met. But she supposed she should stop comparing Felixi to other korvi; this fellow was plainly a breed apart. He stood a stone’s throw away and it seemed like a space full of briar thorns. Scratching for more words, Rue pushed her tongue.</p><p>“You … You don’t like Aloftway?”</p><p>“I don’t like towns. Villages, settlements, whatall else you’d like to call them.”</p><p><span class="u">Recluse</span> sprang to mind. Rue had heard of such folk who lived alone, although she had never met one — not before now. Logically enough, meeting a recluse was unlikely because of their basic nature.</p><p>“If you would carry it halfway,” Rue said, “that would make a difference. We'd be in your small debt, of course.”</p><p>“You’ll still need to drag it the other half of the way. Settling for a half-fixed wagon, hmm?”</p><p>“Fine,” Rue said, harder than she meant to. “I’ll make other arrangements.” She had been hoping to spare hard-working Judellie an errand.</p><p>“Good.” He jerked his chin toward the basket at Rue’s feet. ‘That’s my payment?”</p><p>“Yes, all hazelnuts.”</p><p>He stepped over the nurl and approached, tall and broad as he came near. Rue spotted another scar as he picked up the basket, a faded one concealed between the tendons of his hands.</p><p>“And,” Rue said.</p><p>Air rushed under Felixi’s hackling feathers. Looking to Rue with a hard-line mouth, he listened.</p><p>“I’d like to arrange another catch.”</p><p>“For your new arrivals? Can’t they catch their own damned meat?”</p><p>“I doubt it. Should I tell you the whole story? I won’t ask anything for the telling, either. I’m not a bard.”</p><p>She didn’t expect it to work, a bare bribe against someone cannier than her. But Felixi stared for a stony moment and then barked a ragged sound — Rue barely recognized it as a laugh. A smile pulled at the corner of her mouth.</p><p>“Fine, Rue," he said. “Tell me your tale of Aloftway’s need.”</p><p>“Long ago,” Rue obliged. And then she shook her head, feeling radiantly absurd. “I’m not actually telling this like a legend. The village only goes back three years and four months.”</p><p>Felixi stared. His laughter had long since died — so much for lightening the air between them. Rue ought to get to the point.</p><p>“Anypace … We began this village on hopes and prayers, really. We haven’t got connections like well-known old villages, and Aloftway’s two korvi friends are too valuable to go off building renown. My father left to find allies but right now, we haven’t a notion of where he is. We’ve just been working on the beginning basics of trade — growing a surplus of crops, that sort of thing — but it's been slow work. And now, some days ago a village fellow was killed by wolves.”</p><p>Felixi still had no comment. He stood fixed on her; Rue sensed a shift of his jaw muscles, a marginal rise in his feathered back.</p><p>Rue went on, “It … It came right out of the yellow. We hadn't thought wolves would mistake peoplekind for prey so easily. The fellow was only off foraging for tree bark, maybe a furlong from the edge of town. And we found a second fellow— “</p><p>As though anyone but Rue had found that fellow, and held captive that secret.</p><p>“—He was the same way, hunted and torn apart by wolves. We can see fresh pawprints, we hear their howling on the wind... Everyone has been scared since then. No one wants to be the next friend circled and torn apart next.”</p><p>“So you’re feeding some creatures in exchange for protection,” Felixi asked.</p><p>“Dogs, I’m told. Some fellow or other breeds pups and he owes Aloftway a favour … They’ll need to be fed.”</p><p>“And you haven’t got a scrap of meat to share, so you’re asking me to fetch it each day.”</p><p>“Not every day,” Rue blurted. “I don’t think so, anypace. That’d be stupid, taking on so many dogs that we all starve.”</p><p>And with a raise of his brow, Felixi shifted — changing all over, his feathers finally settling. “Good to know that you have that much sense. Hmf. I’ll catch one more large creature for you. A deer this time, for a half-bushel of nuts or something like them. I’ll be three days.” He paused like his own bristly words stuck in his throat. “I don’t make long-term arrangements, Rue, so tell your mages to scrape out a better plan.”</p><p>“We will. I’ll make sure we find a solution.”</p><p>He made a low, flat sound, and turned away. Yellow plumage fanned between them, his wings spreading like the closing of a door curtain.</p><p>“Felixi? There’s a parchment pouch, tucked down the side. I salt-roasted a few of the nuts, they make a fine snack — it’s Aloftway’s thanks for your trouble.”</p><p>The look he shot Rue was different somehow — lighter, more bitter, and with an odd twist of a smile. In this gemstone moment, Rue was looking at his features in profile, his unstyled shock of mane feathers and the shallow curve of his snout. Felixi’s face was younger than she had thought. No lines from smiling. No grey feathers where his hide and plumage met. Just his mouth set like carved stone and the razor thought in his eyes.</p><p>“I’ll leave your basket in this field when I’m finished with it,” was all he said.</p><p>Right there, barely two steps away from her, he laid his tailtip against the ground and with a bunching and springing of dragon muscle, his wings battered the air to chaos. Rue was air-blind for a harrowing few breaths until her antennae stilled and by then, Felixi was a yellow speck over the trees.</p><p>Strange fellow, Rue thought. Not just because he was a lone-wandering hunter, either. A person could be whatever they chose and not have a bitter tongue in their mouths; regardless of their differences, the three peoplekinds worked and lived by the small acts of grace that held everyone together. But however little he cared for politeness, Felixi did seem to like crisp lines of logic; Rue hadn’t promised him the basket, after all.</p><p>The nurl still laid there, silently bleating. She left it behind, a shape laying there stiff with grass fanned around it. A young beast, judging by its thinness and the over-long ears, but it was still at least as heavy as Rue; she could shift something that size but carrying it was well beyond her. Time now to ask Judellie for her strength.</p><p>Walking brisk, Rue tumbled thoughts of what folk did for each other. What each person in the land owed the others. It was the sort of idea that seemed simple until a person really pried it apart. No one was forced to oblige every request, she supposed with a bitterness in her mouth: no korvi had to fly an errand just because they had wings rooted in their backs. Judellie agreed to fetch this nurl back because of the generosity stoking her inner fire, not out of a mere sense of duty.</p><p>And Rue could have told Amarantha no, in that day surrounded by dandelion seeds. But wasn't generosity different if a village needed that errand, needed it in the face of death? How could one person’s wishes outweigh a hundred needs? It was a problem for Barghest the Legend hound to judge; Rue couldn’t imagine any person having a clear enough mind. She had foraging to do and questions to answer, and if she kept at it, Felixi might keep grudgingly bringing her food.</p><p>The air pulled Rue’s senses — as a shape passed through the wind and leaves. A dogshape pacing slow. The Legend hound, said the whimsy in Rue’s spirit before her fear knew the right word: a wolf. A wolf downwind from her, parting the breeze with its muzzle as a wedge, blurring suddenly into the shadows. It was cloaking itself with darkcasting magic — and it kept moving, a fog wafting closer, a wolf seeking an aemet.</p><p>Rue was running now, her shoes striking rootshapes, and she demanded her mind to stay with her because running could save her but not blind panic running. She was on a faint-trodden path leading to Aloftway; cling to it, she knew. Follow it like a rope. She hurried for pulse-beaten moments, and at some point, she sensed nothing but leaves and air and buzzing insect wings. The wolf had gone. Disappeared back into the mountain wilds. Simple plants stood waving around Rue, as far as she could push her airsense.</p><p>She let out her breath. Here was a lucky encounter, said her first impulse, the one that spoke in voices other than Rue’s own. It wasn’t luck. The wolf had just thought better of chasing her. It recalled that it needed its family to properly hunt, or maybe its instincts reminded it of right and wrong. It wouldn’t hesitate that way if it scented the nurl carcass Rue left behind. Wondering how keen a furkind nose was — and having no way of divining the answer — Rue hurried toward home.</p><p>That blurring shadow must have been what Flerring sensed before he died. He just hadn't paid enough attention to anything but the forest floor, in all likelihood — since Flerring had seemed like a driven sort, with tall plans for his leatherwork. The aemet forager must have sensed that shadow blur as well, among whatever thoughts compelled him to visit a secluded, needful place like Aloftway. Those two hadn’t fled quickly enough. Rue had. What other answer was there? Fear stayed glowing in Rue’s bones, alongside the simplicity of truth.</p><p>Waiting by the chromepice gave Rue’s nerves time to settle. Familiar treeshapes all around, and familiar neighbours passing by with garden greens, or with pails full of sloshing, light-sheening creek water. Judellie showed herself after an eightmoment’s wait, escorting the forager Dariend home with his fist clamped full of camellia. Rue’s eyes widened — she had only found one precious camellia shrub and it was too young to spare many leaves. Not that Aloftway had much use for sepia dye. They might, on some far-off, prosperous day.</p><p>Pausing, Judellie said what looked like reassuring words. She bade Dariend farewell and came to Rue, smiling an apology.</p><p>“Well? Did the Velgarro show up?”</p><p>Rue had nearly forgotten the details of visiting Felixi; they gushed back to her mind and twisted her mouth. “He did.” She turned back toward the forest, with Judellie falling into step beside her. “He wanted no part of carrying his game here, not even if we paid him for the trouble … What's worse, I think there’s a wolf out stalking today. I felt the shape of it.”</p><p>"Best that I'm along, anyway," Judellie said.</p><p>They walked in crackling maple leaves. Judellie hissed a harmony; smoke puffed between her teeth and around her head, trailing warm shapes behind her. This was the best way to ward off predatory beasts, by giving off the smell of hot-gathered firecasting to daunt them. No creature with sense would attack a person wielding Fyrian’s skills.</p><p>“Is it at least a good nurl?” Judellie asked.</p><p>“I suppose. It’s on the thin side. And he didn’t wrap it — we’ll need to cover it once we’re in town.” Rue frowned. “And I didn’t check if there’s blood left in it.”</p><p>“If it’s too fine a mess, I think you’ll need to trade to me.” Judellie grinned, a white show of pointed teeth. “To make it worth my time.”</p><p>“You say that like you’re not getting any meat.”</p><p>“Ah, well.” She shifted, wings twitching and resettling. “I’d only like a little. Can you cast on my onions again? I don’t think I have enough greens to go with meat.”</p><p>Rue had never known anyone who loved onion greens so much. Maybe Judellie could learn to nurture them herself — but Rue discarded that idea. This friend likely didn’t have the patience to learn plantcasting, the element that shied away from her.</p><p>“You’ll be eating like a mountain horse soon enough,” Rue said. “You’re already asking for greens.”</p><p>“If you try to feed me grass stems, I will leave.” Judellie laughed, a weak gust. It hung potent in the air.</p><p>And it kept hanging. There was a distance between them now, full of the motion of hackling feathers and the ache floating in Rue’s chest.</p><p>“I wouldn’t leave,” Judellie admitted. She glanced to Rue and couldn’t hold the gaze. “I gave a promise to Senford. Even if I hadn’t promised him, I can’t leave you folk when you have had such bad luck.”</p><p>Rue liked to believe that when Judellie talked of luck, it was a off-kilter translation of a korvitongue phrase. Something about winds and chance. Their ways seemed full of freedom, so maybe their variety of luck didn't stifle so much.</p><p>“There’s got to be a better way to bring us luck,” Rue muttered. “Thus far, our only ideas are waiting for my father, or talking Felixi of Velgarro into joining a village he hates the idea of.”</p><p>"That sounds like the Velgarro. Hunters, you know? They're strange in the head.”</p><p>Rue paused to consider a stand of saplings and the space between them. Judellie had no such concerns of whether her wider frame would fit through; she passed Rue and kept on, feather-topped tail swaying restless.</p><p>“Are they?” Rue asked. “Stranger than other folk, I mean.”</p><p>"I have heard it said that the first time a person dives on an animal, from up in the sky like korvi hunters do, it changes them. The fast wind and the animal's cry scare a small piece of their soul right out.”</p><p>Rue followed Judellie's back, keeping up with the determined pace; memory stirred; she felt the phantom presence of clutched bedsheets and the long-gone sound of cart wheels. “Hunters use a knife, don’t they? To cut the creature’s throat.” It made for an awful, vicious thought.</p><p>“It’s a more merciful tool than claws.” Judellie looked back, eyes wide with the story's energy. “Imagine learning that! The best way to end a creature? Hunters have a way about them. They've learned more dreadful things, you see?”</p><p>"Do you really think it's the killing that scares off their soul?"</p><p>“Yes. What else would do that?”</p><p>"The skinning and cleaning, perhaps.” If Mother hesitating over the horse meat was any measure, Rue could believe losing a piece of oneself.</p><p>“Mmm.” Judellie paused to let Rue catch up; she stood looking toward the distant sky, her red feathers speckled with forest light. “I don't think so, the skinning isn't so... Ah, I’m not sure which word. Wounding? Stunning?"</p><p>"Traumatic?"</p><p>"Thank you. Yes, they say that happens the first time a hunter surprises and kills a creature, and realizes what he's doing. It's traumatic. He’s— They are never the same afterward.”</p><p>The thought turned over and over in Rue's head as she chewed her lip. The korvi hunter’s way of getting meat wasn't the same as calmly breaking an pigeon's neck, or slitting a horse's throat when it couldn't walk anymore. Those ways had a plainness about them — sometimes even a mercy.</p><p>“You’ve got a stronger nerve than most of your kind,” Judellie told her, with a smiling glance backward. “Talking about this.”</p><p>“Ignoring the truth doesn’t make it less true.”</p><p>“Say that twice!”</p><p>They were nearly at the clearing, the expanse of gathered grass and swaying daisy blooms. Rue pushed her airsense farther, checking the air for the wolf’s blurred shape, listening beyond the breeze and the birdsong. There was nothing but the gentle chaos of the grass and in the middle of that, a gap, where the nurl laid.</p><p>“We ought to keep ourselves alert,” Rue said, chiding herself as much as Judellie. She cut a path toward the carcass and Judellie hurried to follow.</p><p>“I suppose.” She blew a plume of smoke, round-wafting shapes falling from her mouth and whisking away on the breeze. “Something else might come to visit.”</p><p>Rue stopped a short stone-throw from the limp nurl. She imagined the way Judellie curled her claws in the face of danger, that memory embossed into her while she stood by Flerring's body. Slowly, she asked, “Have you ever had to— to fight against a wolf? Before Aloftway?”</p><p>“No,” Judellie replied. She hefted the nurl’s forequarters against her chest, its rump still resting on the ground. “I stopped a basilisk, once. I was travelling with a merchant fellow and his cart — I suppose the basilisk wanted the pigeons. I only needed to blow a lot of smoke and a little fire. Hunting beasts turn into cowards when the meal isn't easy.” Her wings opened fractions as she shifted the nurl’s weight; her tail lifted and her balance altered. Once that grazing animal was arranged over her arms, Judellie regarded it for a solemn moment. She said, “There ought to be more guards in Aloftway, you know? More strong folk to keep your kind safe. I wish there were more than just Giosso and me.”</p><p>Maybe if they had more herbs or beans, some cloth or some precious fallen wood. Maybe Aloftway could gather every spare food seed and sacrifice the boards from its houses, and so gather enough to trade for a plentiful life. It wasn’t a wager Rue liked much.</p><p>"Do you know any odd-job folk who'll keep the bad side of a favour for a few years?” she asked. “That's the only way I can see us getting more guards.”</p><p>A woeful smile twisted Judellie's snout. “If Brenne has a sweet tongue, maybe. The dogs should do us fine. They only want a kind home and a little meat. Hah! Maybe I have a dog’s heart.”</p><p>Rue ran a hand over her tight-braided hair; she couldn’t help her watery smile. “We ought to take the path back. It'll be easier than dragging that through the woods.”</p><p>"Oh, I can manage this. Take me on any path you want.” Judellie jostled the nurl against her body, adjusting her grip. “Actually, the Velgarro did a good job draining this.”</p><p>“Pardon?” Rue thought of casting; she couldn’t picture anyone draining the plantcasting from a grazing animal.</p><p>“Draining the blood from it, I mean. That’s the real trick to keeping hunting beasts away from a kill, I was told. Blood is a strong smell to a furkind nose.”</p><p>“That just makes me wonder where he did drain it,” Rue said. She couldn’t possibly know where Felixi did that grim task, not when he could fly furlongs away on a whim.</p><p>With widening eyes, Judellie said, “It might be worth the time to ask him.”</p><p>It would; Rue made a mark in her memory.</p><p>They walked. Wind stirred the treetops. Rue kept noticing a liquid droplet stretching sluggish down Judellie's shin: the game creature had been drained well but not perfectly. Judellie didn’t seem to mind it.</p><p>"Here is an idea," Judellie said, looking sudden to Rue. “How long has the hunter been catching game creatures and bringing them to this mountain? Maybe cleaning them here?”</p><p>“How long—“</p><p>Someone might have been leaving pungent blood spread about the forest, near the time Aloftway had brought a colony of barely-guarded aemets. The sense of it widened Rue's eyes, too.</p><p>"If he goes about leaving blood and pieces on the open ground, he might be drawing wolves. Do you think that's the reason for... these attacks?"</p><p>"I don't know. It wouldn’t explain why we had those peaceful years before the wolves came.”</p><p>“He wouldn’t tell you how long he has been hunting here, would he?” Judellie asked it careful — because she already knew the answer.</p><p>“I don’t know. Likely not. The Velgarro has too much pride, I can tell that much.”</p><p>Maybe Felixi of Velgarro didn't care what happened to the folk in his wake. It was a thought like a stone in Rue’s belly. But he had agreed to trade at all — and he had landed to speak with Shika in the first place, not knowing what that waving-armed ferrin had wanted of him. Felixi was a person enough to do that.</p><p>Rue and Judellie paused to slip an empty cargo pouch over the nurl’s face; that was all the covering they could manage. Neighbours didn’t mind the look of a stiff creature so much as they didn’t want to see the story told in its face. And in the Aloftway street, Flerring’s family met them and took the stiffening beast from Judellie’s arms, eight aemet hands supporting the weight. They would do all the necessary butchering, they said. As long as the meat was feeding guardians.</p><p>Before retiring to bed that night, Rue paid a visit to Judellie’s home, the house with a taller-tied roof than the others. She cast on a garden patch of onions, and grew them fit to reach the sky.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Rue spent the next handful of days with her eyes on the leaves and her airsense pressed out into the wilderness. She didn’t sense any wolves. Squirrels, and fluttering birds, and bees. Something she supposed was a fjord horse bounding away to safety. No wolves.</p><p>One morning, Rue glimpsed a red-feathered korvi in the distance — someone covered with flashing spots, some kind of jewellery that Judellie wouldn’t bother owning. That person was gone from sight before Rue had taken another breath. They hurried right by Aloftway and disappeared with the wind, and the mountain sky was empty again.</p><p>Rue watched that emptiness for a moment, then kept foraging. She was following a vein of mild, fertile soil and if she focused, she might find a meal.</p><p>Middling day came, a day for Mother to busy herself with humming melodies and checking the pantry baskets for leftover shards of onion skin. Denelend hopped by her side, dragging the Middling basket full of softening plant scraps. They wished Rue fine foraging, both with smiles.</p><p>Rue always wondered whether it was appropriate to forage on this day of the month, while neighbours sang their thanks to Verdana in the street. Mother had told her once that the offered plant scraps needed to come from somewhere, and the Great Ones wouldn’t allow foraging at all if it weren’t part of the natural cycle of things. Wishing she could just meet Verdana and ask — whatever meeting a god would be like, if it were even possible — Rue stuffed empty pouches into her pockets and headed toward the forest. She would search for travelling food today, something that could be dried or smoked, maybe honey-sealed or salted. Something Felixi would deign to trade for.</p><p>She returned with a good harvest — with a full pouch of boleta mushrooms swinging light in her hand, and the location of their rotting log now marked clearer on Rue’s map. But the tinctor colour of crumbled wood was stricken from her memory as she entered the main street — where a boxy new shape sat in the open air. Hitched to squirming, furred creatures, and full of more moving creatures, and surrounded by swarming Aloftway folk. Rue came around leafy branches to see the crowded scene: a travelling cart with two-thirds of the village gathered around it, antennae turning as they spoke to one another. An aemet man stood in the cart, lifting a gangly-legged dog that struggled joyfully.</p><p>"Rue," Brenne called, waving an arm. She beamed bright. “Come here. Our gift arrived early!"</p><p>Rue stifled her frown. So here was a cartload of responsibility, arrived without warning. But everyone looked glad for it, gathered together and welcoming new friends.</p><p>Amarantha stood by Brenne's side, holding a shawl close about her shoulders. She cast a look to Rue and managed to smile. Their eggshell mage hadn’t left her home in days but she had mustered herself for this sudden occasion. Supposing that this was simply another duty, Rue took her place by Brenne’s opposite side.</p><p>The dog breeder climbed out of his cart and set his last pup on the packed street dirt. Age showed as he smiled, a web of creases in his browning face. The cart-drawing creatures were shaggy-furred adult dogs, turning in their harnesses to watch ferrin assistants hop along the cart’s edges. As the dog breeder climbed to the ground, his flanking ferrin leaped over the side of the cart and stood at attention, ears held high.</p><p>“Yes, they’re quite friendly,” the breeder assured folk. “Just show them your hand, first off. Your messenger fellow couldn’t have dropped out of the sky with better timing, I must say!”</p><p>“Good day. Welcome to Aloftway," Brenne said, pressing her way through the crowd toward him.</p><p>Brenne greeted the newcomer — not Amarantha. Rue looked sudden at her: Amarantha watched calm and flat-faced, like she was no wise mage and never had been. Like she didn't recall any of the murky history that had summoned the dog breeder here.</p><p>“You didn’t need to travel on this day,” Brenne chided the breeder, smiling.</p><p>“Oh, no trouble about it. We brought our peelings back to Verdana at the first shard of bright. Amarantha!” The recognition on his face wilted, concern taking over. “Ah, it’s been a while, hmm?”</p><p>She nodded. That appeared to take all the strength she had.</p><p>Brenne murmured to him. <span class="u">She might not speak</span>, she shaped with quiet breath. <span class="u">It’s been a trying few years.</span></p><p>A lifetime passed over the breeder’s face — one Rue didn’t know but could sense the cool mourning of.</p><p>“Then I’ll just,” he said, “speak to the whole rabble?”</p><p>Nodding, Brenne pressed her mouth into a sad smile.</p><p>“And," the breeder added, “we brought you a little foodstuff. Your Giosso fellow made it sound like you could use barley! Show them …?”</p><p>The one ferrin still in the cart gave a nod. Bouncing away, she called out to Judellie in a light voice and pointed to a burlap sack.</p><p>Pausing, the breeder took in air until his chest was a full barrel. “Well, then. Good day, Aloftway,” he said in a leader’s loud voice, “and best wishes to you! I’ve got instructions for you folk and I’ll be telling them to everyone at once. Uses the time wisely, you know.”</p><p>“Would you like a drink first, friend?” Brenne asked.</p><p>“Hot tea would be fine if you’ve got any.”</p><p>“Any kind,” added the ferrin standing by his boot. “We don’t fuss.”</p><p>Amarantha murmured agreement and turned back toward her home. Fetching a welcoming drink when she could have stayed rooted in this auspicious event. Rue was stunned twice more, by the air coiling in Amarantha’s wake, and again when Aloftway’s aemets didn’t find the motion worth looking toward. Amarantha was no longer the village mage; folk’s regard had washed away from her.</p><p>“Now, then,” the breeder said. “Do you and your kin know how to manage beasts like these?”</p><p>“Ah,” Brenne wondered. She glanced to her villagers’ faces. “With a handful of exceptions, I don’t think we’re much of a dog village. Not yet, anypace.”</p><p>“Fair enough. Got to plant a seed somewhere! First things to begin with: the fellows who own these dogs will become leaders of a house, of sorts. Be sure to carry yourselves proud. You’ll give the commands from now onward. Just commands for one dog, but that's still a task to be noted and minded. Dogs take their leaders plenty seriously, and they’ll be a part of your village and a part of your families until they take their last breaths. Never forget that.”</p><p>Rue grew even more unsure at this declaration. If dogs turned out to be a poor solution to this situation, then the people of Aloftway would still be bonded to these creatures. Creatures who ate flesh and would demand to be fed, doing the demanding with pleading eyes instead of with words, which could be denied.</p><p>The breeder was opening a well-worn sack and passing its contents to the ferrin assistants: a set of wooden rings with copper-and-string closures. Three aemet neigbours stepped apart from the crowd. Four young dogs leaned eager toward them.</p><p>"Rue,” Brenne called again. “Come on!”</p><p>And then the lack of a fourth dog owner made a sudden sense. Rue felt the unfilled air she was meant to stand in and she filled up with shock, with flattery, with frustration sizzling inside her. She could have bottled it all and held it silent inside her but gods help her, she didn’t want to.</p><p>“You should tell me,” she hissed at Brenne. “Why didn’t you <span class="u">tell</span> me you were planning to put a responsibility right in my hands? I deserve a moment’s notice beforehand, don’t I?”</p><p>Brenne stared. “Apologies … Dear, we’re still figuring out our places. You know the village will help you with your beast, all the meat we can manage …”</p><p>And how was Rue supposed to refuse a giving sentiment like that? Brenne’s decision was kind but foolish, like anything Aloftway village did. Rue held herself against the frustration so powerful that she wanted to run — and she pushed her lead-weighted body toward the dog breeder, stepping forward to join the others.</p><p>Each of them was handed a wood ring. Rue took hers from a ferrin and saw him smile hopefully, a silent well-wish. She tightened her grasp around the ring, a slender branch grown into a ring shape and polished glossy by a craftsperson.</p><p>"These," said the breeder, “are your guard rings. They're juniper wood and the oil used on them is more juniper. Best stuff to catch a dog's attention with. My pups know their guard rings like they know the ends of their own snouts, and they’ve grown up learning that whoever holds the ring has to be protected. Just train them with a firm hand every day of your lives and the both of you can walk anywhere without fear. There’ll be a brave companion to watch the shadows around you — and watch the bright patches, too, for that matter.”</p><p>One by one, he took excitement-wriggling dogs by their collars. Each one wiggled harder when it met its owner, tails beating back and forth.</p><p>As he pulled gentle on the fourth pup, the dog breeder smiled knowingly at Rue. “You're the lucky-born fellow, I suppose?”</p><p>She smiled and felt it tartly. “Folk say that about me.”</p><p>“This is my lucky fourth-born. Couldn't mistake him for anything — you see that lighter brown spot on his nose? Like he was touched by a god’s hand! The two of you should have all sorts of good fortune when you're together.”</p><p>This destiny-soaked pup looked ridiculous, too skinny yet for his own head and paws. He stared at Rue with mud-coloured eyes, yanking free of the breeder's grasp to push his sniffing nose closer.</p><p>“Fortune,” she wondered on a low breath. This wasn’t fortune. It was an opportunity, however frustrating opportunity could be. Balling a fist — as folk said to do when greeting an unfamiliar dog — Rue offered herself to the snuffling gusts of the creature's nose. He leaned in too quickly, jabbed his nose on her blunt-spined knuckle, and recoiled with hurt welling in his eyes.</p><p>Rue breathed a laugh. So much for this luck phenomenon everyone raised a fuss about: it did a grand lot of good for this pup. She unballed her hand and turned it over, offering a less hazardous chance to sniff her fingers. The dog took it and licked her with a slimy, warm tongue.</p><p>“If you put that guard ring on,” a ferrin aide suggested, hopping closer. “he’ll get used to the two scents together.”</p><p>Rue obeyed, picking the strings looser and sliding the ring over her hand. Responsibility sat heavy on her arm now, warm wood and cool metal catching what light made it through the trees. Her new dog sat at attention, staring up with as much seriousness as his gangly body could manage; he hardly looked like the same sniffing fool from a moment ago.</p><p>Pushing her reluctant tongue, Rue asked, “Does he have a name?”</p><p>"This one is Feor," chirped the ferrin. She hopped closer again and sat on her haunches to stroke the dog, her clawed fingers spreading on the thick coat; the dog flicked his tongue toward this friend, too.</p><p>“He’s Feor unless you'd like to call him something different," the breeder added. “He won't mind. Just pick one name and stick with it, that's the only trick!"</p><p><span class="u">Feor</span>. A name like someone had taken the lucky number <span class="u">four</span> and bent its sounds. Wrenched the word into shape like a hapless piece of iron. The pup stared up at Rue, oblivious to the cloud of luck and fortune hanging around the two of them. When Rue extended her ring-bearing arm to one side — slowly, as an experiment — the pup watched it with rapt attention. Following the legend-steeped trinket and perfectly willing to follow anyone wearing that. Even Rue Tennel, if she walked into the forests without any regard for luck.</p><p>“Thank you,” Rue said, “Feor will be a fine name for him.”</p><p>The breeder called for everyone’s attention a moment later; aemets, ferrin and dogs alike looked to him. He borrowed back the guard ring from Rue and led Feor to a space in the crowd.</p><p><span class="u">Stay</span>, the breeder said, and Feor stood like a clay statue. <span class="u">Seek</span>, the breeder said, throwing a rolled burlap scrap that Feor chased without hesitation. He showed and explained the language these dogs knew, a clipped sort of commontongue that had no pleasantries, no words softening other words — only commands, each one the simplest possible way to describe an action.</p><p>“Don’t hesitate to use these commands,” the breeder said. He turned a look to the gathered crowd, a graveness in his gaze. “When you keep a dog, you're its leader and it wants you to be sure of yourself. From the sounds of things, you may need this command …” Striding to the rolled burlap, the breeder threw it again — and he pointed, mirroring its fall. “Feor, <span class="u">attack</span>.”</p><p>The dog rushed, snatching the burlap from the air and shaking it. A muffled growl escaped his throat and the burlap whipped like a living thing’s neck wouldn’t; folk’s hands lifted through the air toward their mouths. Dogs were cousins to wolves. Watching this command acted out, the bloodline was easy to see.</p><p>“I know it’s a little on the grim side,” the breeder said. “But remember it anyway. Practice it sometimes.”</p><p>This was why dogs made fine guardians for aemetkind: they could do what was necessary, regardless of whether it was pleasant. But Rue’s own hand had still drifted upward in alarm, hovering between her chest and her mouth, unsure where to land. She lowered that hand back to her side. She wasn’t going to shy from truths anymore. And some distance away, she noticed movement — Judellie and Giosso loading trade goods into the breeder’s cart. They set down pouches, and boxes, and even wood boards untied from the walls of someone’s home.</p><p>Rue was given back her guard ring, and Feor returned to her. Aloftway lingered in its own street for moments longer before a handful of folk reluctantly left to fetch their Middling baskets. Someone pointed out that there was no reason the new pups shouldn’t see the Middling circle — and soon, the mass of people funnelled into the central Middling path, a commotion of friendliness and moving feet. Quartets of voices sang their thanks to Verdana.</p><p>Feor seemed pulled apart by the noise, starting and sniffing in a dozen directions, but when Rue said “Here,” in a firm voice, he did follow. Their arrangement might work if he was always so obedient. There might be hope if Aloftway could adopt some discipline, and some courage against the swirling unknown. In that moment, among a riot of allies and wagging-tailed dogs, this place called Aloftway was a warm shine in Rue’s heart; she wished she hadn’t thought so many pointed things about it.</p><p>Rue heard Mother’s delighted cry past all the rabble. The arriving folk put a broad smile onto her face: there was no finer gift for Elova Tennel than bringing a hundred friends to spontaneously visit her.</p><p>It took some time for everyone to return their scraps to Verdana, crowded as the Middling circle was this day. The clearing hadn’t been made for so many at once. Everyone minded their feet, stepping careful around the circle of quartz crystals and clay Legend Creatures, minding their own elbows as they tipped basket contents onto scrap piles. When the bustling was done, Rue sat on the ground in between quietly beaming Mother and bright-eyed Judellie, near plant heaps grown an armlength taller. Denelend hopped about, pouring his brightcasting into the three largest quartz stones — “A bit of light’ll make it feel larger in here,” he said. Folk lingered in this sudden-sprouted celebration, gathering around the yellow-shining quartz stones like they were hearth fires.</p><p>“I’m doing Juniper’s work, in a way,” came the dog breeder’s voice from across the quartz hearth. Steam rose from between his hands: he had finally gotten his cup of tea. “I’m sure she’d have wanted everyone to have a loyal beast the same way she did. You know the tale of Juniper and her dog, don’t you, sprout?”</p><p>A pause; Rue sensed the two Aloftway children, the only aemets junior to herself, shaking their heads so their antennae cut air.</p><p>“You haven’t heard it? Goodness! You need to know about Juniper if your neighbours are going to have dogs.”</p><p>Anticipation thickened in the air, the combined attention of people ready to hear old truths. Conversations hushed. And on a deep breath, the breeder began:</p><p>“Long ago, there was an aemet woman named Juniper. She liked the feel of earth under her feet and she drew strength from it, just as a plant draws from deep roots. Juniper walked the land and saw its sights, too determined for any howling wind to stop her, and too brave for any portent air to unsettle her. She even walked through a hard-wind rainstorm for an entire day, not daunted in the least. Juniper's dog followed her everywhere she went, raising his hackles at any unfitting motion in the land. That creature made sure she was safe and he didn't leave her side for a heartbeat.”</p><p>Rue’s hand fell to Feor — who laid so quietly in front of her that she had nearly forgotten him. Dog fur passed smooth under her fingers. She got another flick of slimy tongue against her skin.</p><p>“They grew old together, walking and seeing each corner of the land. They knew every breath of air and every pebble resting on soil. Juniper was brown with age and the dog had a limp in his hind leg, but Juniper didn’t feel that they were finished. She wanted one more new sight, she told her dog while she stroked his ears. One more place they could see together.</p><p>The dog jumped to his feet and trotted away from Juniper, barking for her to follow. She called for him to slow down but the dog had a force in his heart. He kept trotting even as his limp grew worse and Juniper wished for a rest. They finally reached a place of blowing sand and smooth rock, and plants as tough as rope. It was a desert at the edge of the land, the only place the two of them had never been before. Juniper and her dog looked at the desert stones and the wind-warped trees, and the shine of endless sand. Juniper sensed winds with a thousand years’ wisdom in them and not one mote of water. It was new, indeed. Thank you, Juniper told her dog. He licked her hand with love in his eyes. And then he laid down and breathed no more.”</p><p>The breeder paused. Rue thought she sensed a twitch in his air-filled throat, a swallowed lump of emotion.</p><p>“The ... The dog returned to the earth to nourish the soil. Juniper stayed there, kneeling over his resting place, and she cried. Cried until she had no more moisture to cry with, and soon she died herself. In that dry land, their remains gave life to a new plant sprout — one called a juniper bush. It had scaly leaves and tough wood, so it feared no drought. Even now, a juniper will still grow wherever sand gathers — as long as there’s a friend there to look upon that sand.”</p><p>To Rue’s knowledge, that was a legend many hundreds of years old, passed down by a chain of grandmothers. Folk said that the desert was long gone. Passed over by the shifting Great Barrier, and swallowed by the outside wastelands full of terrible Cold. Rue had heard those teaching words in Ordiny’s broodery — and it was just one of the passed-down stories she still remembered the cadence of. Even without its desert home, that juniper plant must have lived on, protected and nurtured by its aemet sisters. Juniper wood had to come from somewhere, after all. Looking at the guard ring on her wrist, Rue could imagine the months of work that went into wood cultivation even before polishing oil and metal findings became involved. She wondered what sort of soil a juniper plant preferred. Something inhospitable to other plants, surely. Acidic. Soil that would starve the roots of anything less hardy. Rue ran fingertips over her guard ring and found it polished too smooth to feel like wood at all.</p><p>“I don’t think we’ll need to go to any deserts.” she told Feor. “Just this mountain.”</p><p>Feor opened his mouth like a smile. On both sides of Rue, her family beamed at him.</p><p>“Feor, his name is?” Judellie leaned to see the dog better, to consider him. “Is that a special name …?”</p><p>“It’s likely based on <span class="u">four</span>,” Mother said. She spoke confident: she knew every custom that had ever been declared lucky.</p><p>“The breeder said something like that,” Rue added. “He’s the fourth pup of his litter.”</p><p>“I’m glad he went to you,” Mother admitted. She worked an arm behind Rue, to put a love-soft hand on Rue’s shell. “You two match. Two is a half-measure of luck, you know.”</p><p>“You match?” Denelend hopped closer, tipping his head. “Oh, your names? Aemet names mean things, don’t they?”</p><p>“They do. Come on, Denelend — have a rest, dear. We’ve got plenty of light.”</p><p>Mother paused until Denelend was seated by her booted feet, patiently enduring while Feor sniffed him over. It was growing less strange to think of this gathering as the Tennel family — one with found friends woven in, a ferrin and a korvi and now a dog, too.</p><p>“Our kind mostly name our girls after Verdana’s plants,” Elova Tennel began in the voice of a mother and a leader. “Surely you’ve noticed that. Aemets name all the new plants in legends, but really, we were only holding onto the names until the plants arrived.” She paused for a stumbling heartbeat. “Ah, Elova isn’t a plant, of course. I’m a tall stalk standing out of the field.”</p><p>Rue felt the luck gathering nearer, that imagined force that gripped lives tight. It must have felt different to Mother — perhaps like a warm wind, or a grandly shining light.</p><p>“But you took up the way of plant names,” Judellie prompted.</p><p>Mother smiled, her memories pulling her mouth like a full pouch’s drawstring. “I always thought that when I had children, I ought to name them in Verdana’s glory. Senford said he didn't much mind, I could pick any names that I thought right, so I’ve been simply following my heart and watching for signs. My eldest daughter is Lavender — she was calm, you see. She barely fussed at all when she was born, like she knew what was happening and she was glad to arrive. I had her name in mind and she suited it perfectly. My Lavender...”</p><p>The pouchstring smile pulled again; Mother’s hand stayed on Rue’s back, like it belonged there always.</p><p>“But as I quickened with my second child, I didn’t have a name picked yet. I looked at all the garden plants in Ordiny and I felt, no, none of these were quite right. Until one day, I was bringing a pot to the river to scrub it truly well. And I was walking down the path — that one through the Ordiny wetland, it was frightfully damp but the flowers grew up strong. I was walking along with my eyes set on nothing particularly —and that's when I saw a rue sprout. It hadn’t been there before, and I went to the river every day. Why should I notice it then if not for a reason?”</p><p>Rue held herself still against the squirming inside her.</p><p>“It had to be destined,” Mother went on. “Great Verdana granted me luck that day and my child would have it, too. So when my second daughter came into this land, I named her Rue.”</p><p>Painting on a small smile, Rue said nothing. This was the gathered weight of every coincidence in her life, every time she had found or sensed something useful — and in doing that, she had supported some grandiose image of luck.</p><p>“Oh,” Judellie said, warm and fond. Rue sensed the motion of her lips parting in a toothy smile. “That is nice. I wish my name meant so much.”</p><p>“I thought korvi names had meanings, too?”</p><p>“Only the House names. Cherez means …” Judellie paused; Rue could nearly sense the effort moving within her, the turning millstones of her two-tongued mind. “It means, ah. <span class="u">We hold dear</span>. Or <span class="u">we have love</span>. Something close to that.”</p><p>“That’s plenty lovely,” Mother said.</p><p>“I didn’t know any of that,” Denelend admitted. His ears fell a fraction, his head still tipped with intrigue. “Both of my names only mean that I’m me.”</p><p>“That’s got its own charm,” Rue said. She liked the thought of a name crafted on the day of her birth, a unique piece to call hers. Two ferrin names together would be a wealth of gifts.</p><p>“And it’s all so much noise to Feor, isn’t it?” Judellie reached out to scratch the dog’s fur with a long-boned hand, starting a gleeful struggle as he wriggled. Judellie met Rue’s eyes. “Whatever he’s called, may he keep you safe every step of the way.”</p><p>Rue did hope so. Now with a warmer heart than ever before.</p><p>The breeder left soon afterward, sent on his way with a chorus of friendly voices. His wagon now held baskets of Aloftway’s material things, an assortment of objects less vital than food. With the festival air dissipating mote by mote, folk stayed in the Middling circle to share pan bread and a precious few brambleberries, and they talked of the future. Brenne left before nightfall — apologizing, not mentioning Amarantha’s name but surely thinking it.</p><p>Rue could hear calm voices outside even while she laid in her bed — with Feor laid curled by the bedside, his breath an even tide in the darkness.</p><p>Rue only hoped people would remember that these dogs came for a blade-edged reason: to protect, and perhaps even to sacrifice their lives. To fend off the shapes in the shadows. To help Aloftway be a community in productivity as well as spirit. Everyone still needed to try.</p><p>Rue still saw, behind her eyelids, the way Feor had gobbled down his evening meal of deer meat — gobbled it as any growing creature would. They would need Felixi the hunter’s help and need it dearly. Luck was a fine idea for telling broodery tales but truly, what could it do to help Aloftway fill its dogs’ bellies? They needed the bulk of a heritage. No, not the heritage, Rue chided herself. They needed only the connections that came with it — the wide-thrown net of traders and allies and wanderers-by that any successful village had. But before that could happen, Aloftway needed feather wings descending, bringing more meals.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Chapter 9</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Not that it was any more pressing than the size of a shadow at nighttime, but Syril of Reyardine couldn’t help eyeing that Surgings mountainside as he flew past it. Hidden somewhere in that patchwork maple forest was a crumb of a gem called Aloftway village, or so the rumour said. It was a new settlement just sprouted by some aemets and gods look on it, it certainly was a slow-growing sprout — why, Syril hadn’t even heard of anyone trading with the place and in his own opinion, why bother scratching a home into the rocks if there was nothing there to be gained?</p><p>He was sweeping the tree-thick terrain with his eyes when the wind bucked under his wings, as it had the last few times he flew past this peak. Surely some kind of demon, Syril thought with an uneasy stir in the most knowledgeable part of his gut. Nowhere else did the wind knot itself up like this and nearly send him toppling out of the sky; he’d heard stories of mountain winds churned by an enormous, winged creature, a monstrous child of the sky that ate chaos. And he’d heard other stories of demon children, just fledglings playing rough games in the mountain skies. Hard to say what demons did with themselves, and Syril didn't have a mind to bet an acorn on them.</p><p>At any pace, the truest rumours spoke of a new village under those winds, and Syril did hope that a new village would make his acquaintance — in this month or any other. New faces meant good business.</p><p>He focused his gaze back on the plains, to distant Widely town resting at the centre of four good flying winds. That town had two well-worn roads pointing the way toward it, and even a newer route wearing its way around the mountain's northern perimeter, where carts and hooves wore the grasses back a hair's width more each eightday. Yes, Widely drew its share of trade; it was a place as tried and sure as an old cornfield. Syril’s thoughts circled back to the goods tied to his pants waistband and the new beadwork looped around his wrists and ankles and neck — all the result of fine trades. Anyone in Reyardine House would be proud if they saw what Syril carried. With a grin warming his snout, he hurried his wingbeats toward the rooftops.</p><p>Widely was also a fine example of cooperation between the peoplekinds. Syril couldn’t help thinking that every time he landed; today, falling earthward on wide-held wings, he thought the very same. The buildings were roofed and walled with grass thatch, but built on metal poles so that aemet folk wouldn't fuss about which direction the wood grain in the poles was running. Truly a revelation. The result was good, large buildings that tapered only slightly inward, instead of the drastically slanted pole homes that stifled out every bit of headspace a korvi could possibly put his horns in. All around, Widely made excellent use of materials, in Syril’s opinion.</p><p>He landed like a drifting spark in the street, minding his cargo pouches so they hung steady and didn’t strike against his knees. The journey had gone well and with any welcome scrap of good luck, Syril had managed not to bruise his merchandise.</p><p>After a little walking — and a few handfuls of hellos and how-are-yous said to familiar faces — Syril came upon the inn. Vraya of Anduille was no mage but her fine establishment would suit a well-loved town leader to live in. It stood tall even for a Widely building, with quartz stones fitted into torches and throwing firecasting light — as though a fellow might lose their way in the streets and follow a guiding light.</p><p>The usual patrons sat inside: aemet folk playing foursticks and trading town rumours; that korvi woman who sculpted tin figurines with her clawtips. Vraya’s nearest-hand assistant — the rust-feathered fellow who was always cleaning, Syril would remember his name any heartbeat now — paused from sweeping the floor dirt to give Syril a smile. More unusually, ferrin lolloped around the room, measuring the walls’ span with lengths of string — and every one of them, Syril noticed, wore a same-patterned sarong tied about their waists. All fine and feisty, but none of these folk were Vraya of Anduille. No, indeed.</p><p>In a forest of a scene like this, Syril had a feeling he would need to turn over a stone or two. He began by leaning on the countertop made of wine barrels and peering over. And, ah, he did like succeeding on the first try.</p><p>"Vraya," he said to the good establishment owner's backside, “my friend! How is this day treating you?"</p><p>“Is that Syril of Reyardine?” A shuffling echoed out from one of the larger barrels; Vraya's orange-feathered tail lashed excited and her wings spread as far as the barrel would allow. “I had a feeling in my bones you'd be here. Not today, I thought. Tomorrow. Curious, isn't it?"</p><p>"I dare say it is! I hadn’t even told anyone I was coming — this trip was simply a chance of a whim!”</p><p>Backing out of the barrel on carefully placed knees, Vraya said, “Providence, then.” She turned a sweet smile up at him. “Are you here to wet your throat, or just here to talk?"</p><p>“I wouldn’t turn down a cup of something! But don’t fuss on it for any great length of a moment, please — I’m here for information, and you’d best believe I have the goods to trade for it!”</p><p>“Fine enough.” She pressed a fist to the ground and rose, hurrying to brush dust from her tassel-edged apron and straighten the copper pins in her mane feathers. “Pardon me, Syril, I must look a sight. I've been getting the barrels ready in case there’s a plum harvest.”</p><p>“In case?” Syril hated to hear crops discussed as possibilities, not certainties. It meant he might have troubling news to carry about instead of harvest goods. Folk didn’t trade him as generously for bad news: even if they could eat fretful words, the taste would be terrible, Syril had no whit of a doubt.</p><p>“Yes, in case,” Vraya said. “My, then, I’ll just blurt some information for you right now, I suppose!” She paused to fill two cups with expertly ladled cordial. Leading the way to a table, she began, “Not a fourday after you left last time, we found the first gasterslug in the Lowellings’ field.”</p><p>Kneeling opposite Vraya and accepting his cup, Syril winced. “Dreadful creatures, truly. Is it a bad outbreak?”</p><p>“Well, yes. It seems to me that gasterslugs are always bad... But Widely will manage. Our foragers are already spending more time out and about — they’re having to walk farther, though, the north-western fields have got great big bald places where shoulder-high polegrass used to be.”</p><p>Plains-foraged goods, Syril noted. Sweetleaf, and blossoming things of all varieties, and perhaps some partridge eggs if he was fortunate and quick to ask. He shuffled the various lists in his mind.</p><p>Layering her knuckles around her cup, Vraya added, “We won’t manage by a very generous margin, that’s all. Nobody’s quick to trade when they have barely enough corn for dinner, you see? Calendula doesn’t seem to be warding the slugs off and there’s only enough salt to outline half of the fields. The mage and magelings are distributing it to folk with the fewest farm-hands there to keep a vigil.”</p><p>“You’re using salt? Quite the expensive method of protection, I must say!” Imagine taking white treasure and trading it for nothing, just pouring it onto the earth to dissolve away; the thought made Syril grip a reassuring handful of his bracelet beads.</p><p>“Oh, we know. But salt won’t fill anyone’s belly.”</p><p>“That’s a spilled mess of a shame, friend. I’ll say it again if you wish to hear it.”</p><p>“No need.” Vraya’s mouth bent into a smirk. “We’re well aware.”</p><p>This turn of events certainly dropped a boulder in Syril’s path. He might manage to trade his fine bracelets and that handsome piece of carving chert, but only with patience. Moreover, if he wanted trade goods sent toward that little Aloftway village to speed its growth, the time to ask certainly wasn’t now, with slugs gobbling the Widely fields down to nothing.</p><p>“So,” Vraya went on, “if you don’t see many folk of our feather, it's because some of them are off telling other towns to mind their outskirts — Quickwind, Ordiny, I think someone is winging away to Sproutings right now. Anyone else with free hands is out in the fields, snuffing slugs.”</p><p>“Snuffing! That’s an odd choice of words for— What with using fire to …” The joke was a wicked one, come to think of it. Syril glanced to the aemet fellows at near tables, offering his most incandescent smile to soothe their sensibilities. “Ah, what about yourselves? You and your assistant?” They weren’t the type to get involved in such ugly business.</p><p>“Not especially. We’re fixing meals for anyone who doesn't have the time to cook themselves.” With a banked fire in her eyes, Vraya smiled. “I’m working on a little song and dance, too.”</p><p>“Actual song and dance, or are you turning a phrase?”</p><p>“Can’t I do both?”</p><p>“Of course, my friend! But I’d appreciate your kindness in telling me so!”</p><p>“All right, then.” Lowering her voice, glancing to the aemet folk who had stopped paying mind, Vraya said, “I’m finally making this place into a showserve house. These small friends in the sarongs? They have the cleverest tumbling routines I’ve ever seen. There’s nothing like a performance to mend folks' morale!”</p><p>“Well, strike a spark and see the flames leap,” Syril crowed, “it’s taken you more than enough time! And I don’t doubt you’ll make a fine effort of it, you and, ah—” Syril waved a hand past Vraya, at her assistant. That burgundy-feathered fellow. Whatever his name was.</p><p>“He’s been mixing cordial blends for the occasion! Just you wait and see what we’ve got planned, Syril, luck make it wonderful.” Vraya wrung her hands, like the anticipation was too much to bear.</p><p>“Cordial, hmm? I think you’ll want this, then.” He untied his most fragile cargo pouch and laid it careful on the table. The elderberries were nested in cotton bolls but there was no such thing as handling trade fruit with too much care.</p><p>“You didn’t! Oh, well, now!” She glowed like hearth coals, peering inside the pouch. “Some of the cordial will be put aside for you, to be sure.”</p><p>“Think nothing of it, my friend! Just tell me about a different wind in the sky, if you would.” A generous sort like Vraya would talk all day for Syril; he only needed to pack and stow away what news he needed. “What do you know about that young village in the mountains? Aloftway, I believe they’ve named it?”</p><p>“Oh, goodness. I don’t think I have enough news to trade,” she fretted. “We haven’t met anyone from Aloftway since they first tied up their house boards. A korvi of theirs came and she delivered the mage’s greetings, the better part of three years ago. That’s the most we’ve seen of them. Not a lot of wings stirring over there.”</p><p>Just as Syril thought: a small village with too few korvi to support any amount of trade. Gods bless aemets and their industrious nature, but they did truly struggle at moving their wares around. He clicked his tongue and silently cursed the luck of it, that every community didn’t have a crowd of hands and wings to help move its goods around. “And here I was hoping for some camellia to trade around. I’d guess that demons sit slavering on every mountaintop, if the amount of camellia I've seen this year has been a mark of it. Or mustard! Do you know what I could trade for a good few knuckles of mustard leaf?”</p><p>“The entire land,” Vraya replied.</p><p>That splashed a grin over his face. “Ah, but you flatter me, friend. I don’t even want that much land, to be as frank as a snake’s tooth. There’s no one alive who’d trade me for all of it! And if I had to divvy the whole land into <span class="u">bits</span> and then trade it away—”</p><p>“Oh, now, what was the other bit about Aloftway village?” Vraya asked herself. Squinting at the roof, she ventured, “Pardon me, Syril. I just recalled something I heard. Aloftway, I believe, has an aemet friend travelling the land to recruit korvi. He’s asking our kind to come live in cool treeshade — and you know how well that bargain tends to fare.”</p><p>Wincing, Syril nodded.</p><p>“And so this one fellow has been out wandering, trying to raise renown for some years,” Vraya went on. “Their korvi messenger said something about him being the place's heart and essence, if not its mage. Now, what was that fellow’s name … Senford. Senford Wennering.”</p><p>That did strike a drum in Syril’s memory. “I could swear I’ve met that fellow, but I never swear unless I’m sure as a laid brick! What’s his house?”</p><p>“His family, you mean?”</p><p>“Yes, yes.” Korvi and aemet folk had a mismatched heap of words for the same handful of things.</p><p>“I can’t say, Syril. Apologies. I’m sure the wanderer’s name is Senford Wennering, though.”</p><p>“If I had a finely polished sapphire,” Syril said, “to bet with at this very moment, I would wager that the fellow is married into the Tennel family. Tinnit? Tennel? Something near that. The ones who muddle about with dye. And that Senford, he seemed like a good fellow with a blaze of a fire in his belly, that was my exact thought when I met him.” It wasn’t every day that Syril met an aemet walking alone from town to town, looking entirely unruffled about it.</p><p>Vraya hummed. “You spend your time mostly in the western land, don’t you? You might find Senford — and really, I think he’s wandering in a poor choice of direction. If he wants korvi who don't mind the cool, close-packed feel of a forest, he won’t find them near the Volcano.”</p><p>“Not unless he’s got a bushel of luck to bargain with,” Syril agreed. “Mind you, I was hatched in the Volcano and now I flap in and out of any village that has two grapes to trade, so I’m not the best one to smelt words on the subject.”</p><p>Twirling her cup between her palms, smiling her wisest smile, Vraya said, ”I can’t imagine you living in a forest village for any amount of time, though.”</p><p>“Goodness, burn the thought! I don’t mind it for a handful of hours, but keeping at it for eightdays, stoking my fire every time I plan to move about? It’s no life for this fellow, I’ll say that and make a mark of it!”</p><p>“So, then,” Vraya said, eyeing him. “Where are you headed next?”</p><p>Syril had half a mind to visit his favourite twelve merchants, trade for a truly shining selection of goods, and then fly that selection to Aloftway. He could drop their jaws to the ground with the things a canny Reyardine could bring. No, he told himself. Hold onto that plum until it was well and ripe.</p><p>“I’ve got to get back to the Volcano soon,” he said. “Gods know that the four sides of Hotrock always have word to pass along and some quartz to trade for it! But I’ll hurry straight back here with some goods and sundries to shore up you working folk. There are plenty of things I don’t wish to see, and the collapse of Widely crops isn’t one of them!”</p><p>In the silence, a peculiar feeling crept down Syril’s back. Then he couldn’t help noticing Vraya grimly waving a hand as if to say <span class="u">lower</span>. And the aemet folk staring again from other tables. Perhaps he had spoken a mite too loudly to be considered strictly discretionary.</p><p>“Heh! Banish me for even suggesting it, of course,” he added, grinning.</p><p>“Nothing will be collapsing around here,” Vraya declared. For a brief moment, she was a picture of calm and poise, flicking a hearth-warm smile toward her patrons. And as they turned back to their business, Vraya tipped her head at Syril. “Because you’ll spread word that Widely could use salt and anything else a slug dislikes. And able farmhands, too. Yes?”</p><p>“Bet the house on that wager, my friend!” He fanned wing feathers to frame his own truth. “I’ll put words in ears and bring you a fine, heavy pouch full of gifts!”</p><p>“Good! Ah. Will you be staying?”</p><p>“Not tonight, I regret to say! Actually,” Syril said, getting to his feet, “I might make a sizable piece of my journey today if my wings are quick, and they certainly are! Thank you for the hospitality, good Anduille.”</p><p>“Hurry back,” she said, grinning. “I’ll ask everyone and their brothers, see if I can find some news about your Aloftway village.”</p><p>“Oh, I would like that, indeed!” With any luck, Syril would be able to begin another supply run immediately after this one ended. He did enjoy gathering work, like a wealth of gemstones clattering in his hands.</p><p>On the return flight, Syril banked around Surgings mountain instead of flying taut-straight over it. No, he did not care for those demon winds one bit. But he did pass a more careful eye over the forest, the amassed textures of many thousands of trees — since he hoped to see a village flickering past underneath them. If Syril kept himself honed and sharp, perhaps he might sight a treasure.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Chapter 10</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Three days slithered by. At the planned meeting time, Rue stood again in the daisy field. This time she had a basket of nuts and pan bread combined, and a guardian even an irritable recluse couldn't mind: quiet Feor, who could keep her occupied while she waited. Rue had a list of dog commands marked into her memory and she didn’t doubt that every one had its uses.</p><p>“<span class="u">Stay</span>,” she said, and she walked away from Feor’s trembling presence. “<span class="u">Seek</span>,” she said, and he bounded toward a thrown leather scrap. “<span class="u">Here</span>,” she said, and he bounded back to Rue’s side just as eager.</p><p>It did pass the time, this work-laced game. Rue repeated the commands just to see Feor perform them. Then she stared at the leather scrap between them and wondered how to try the <span class="u">attack</span> command. She spoke the word once and Feor stared confused at her. She tried it again while throwing the leather scrap, with more force in her voice; this time Feor chased it and savaged his harmless target. That was his training routine, it seemed. Maybe he would only attack a living creature if Rue seemed in danger, if something raced at her as quick as a falling leather scrap. She hoped that wasn’t true; she thought of being between hunting beasts' jaws before her guardian would act, and it sent a chill though her.</p><p>Rue returned to practicing the <span class="u">seek</span> command. Searching out the leather scrap in the leaves and the blossoms became more play than training. Eventually, Feor dangled his tongue out his mouth and leaped just for the joy of it, for the rush of the air and the return of his paws to grass-tufted earth. He came to Rue and butted her hand, and she was kneeling, rubbing behind her pup’s ears and chuckling despite herself. Small wonder that people liked dogs, if this was how sincere they were in between their sharp-toothed duties.</p><p>Alongside that thought, she noticed the gusting air of Felixi’s wings as he dropped to earth.</p><p>“You have a guard creature,” he huffed, “so you’ve let your guard down, hmm?”</p><p>His voice itched like nettle hairs, but Rue couldn’t deny his good sense; she hadn’t pressed her airsense out into the forest in the last hour. Which was irresponsible. She stood, swallowing bitterness. “Hello, Velgarro.”</p><p>“Fine day to you,” Felixi said tartly. He set down his burden — a sap deer with its long legs splaying and long neck limp, bigger than the nurl — and he took a deep drink of air. He looked down his snout at tense-staring Feor. “Fine day to you, too, woofbeast. He’s the one eating the meat, hmm?”</p><p>“That’s right. This fellow and his three littermates. And some of the good meat is going to our korvi kin, for their own guard work.” Rue hardly noticed her own voice speaking — because she watched Feor advancing on hesitating steps toward the hunter and his game, his tail held level, his hackles relaxed. He wasn't liable to attack, Rue was moderately confident.</p><p>“I should <span class="u">hope</span> your guards are all fed,” Felixi muttered. He watched Feor with a sudden silence.</p><p>Feor chose the deer as his first interest. He siphoned air through wiggling nose — then he looked up at Felixi.</p><p>Standing with arms wound together, Felixi regarded the dog back. And in a more usual tone, he said, “But I’m sure you're fair enough. You’ve proven worth the landing, so far.”</p><p>Rue recalled suddenly that Felixi was speaking to her, to the aemet who was apparently enough of a grown woman. A compliment from him felt like something rare, a glimpsed legend fleeing into the forest. “Thank you,” she managed. “I do try. Does this basket look enough for a whole deer? I couldn’t grow so many nuts as last time—“</p><p>Not without dizzying herself, spending that much plantcasting.</p><p>“—So there's some woodroot bread, too.”</p><p>Grimacing, Felixi said, “It’s a marvel I took flight with a creature this size. I burned plenty of casting.”</p><p>“Take some of the deer back, if you’d like …?”</p><p>Felixi must not have expected such an easy solution: his brows shot up and he hummed mild. He reached for his knife. The long hunting knife of korvi-forged metal, sheening as it slid into the daybright. But Felixi paused, then, his bristling look aimed square at Feor. The dog still stood over Felixi’s quarry — igniting some hunter’s jealousy, Rue could only suppose.</p><p>“Feor, <span class="u">here</span>,” she called firm. Feor trotted immediately back to her side, and she patted his earth-coloured fur while Felixi began the disagreeable business of removing a leg from the deer.</p><p>“This does make it easier, doesn't it?” Rue asked. “I hadn’t thought to suggest it before but really, it doesn’t matter to Aloftway if the creature is whole. There's still plenty of meat.”</p><p>Grunting agreement, Felixi worked a wedge of air downward.</p><p>“Would you hunt for us again? You can keep a piece for yourself, if you’d like that. And I’ll bring something fresh-cooked to make a four-sided meal of it.”</p><p>In a deep-buried nook of herself, Rue couldn’t believe her own gall. But Felixi narrowed considering eyes at her, pausing in his moist-fleshed work. He then turned back to it, switching his grip on the knife.</p><p>“One more trade, Rue,” he said. “Don’t drain yourself if the nuts aren’t growing — just fill the basket with something else. Something that— How <span class="u">is</span> the foraging, of late?”</p><p>Rue blinked. “It seems thin to me? But I’m doing the largest part of Aloftway's foraging now and I’m using my own mapped trails. I might be overlooking things.”</p><p>“We lacked rain for the better part of a month. Then that fire flushed all the small creatures everywhere, which means they’re eating whatever they can find—” Felixi snapped his mouth closed. He finally cut free his piece of the deer’s remains, and pulled an empty cargo pouch from his waistband more hurriedly than needed. “At any pace. It looks like you may have more hard foraging ahead.”</p><p>Rue was lit full of ideas now: Felixi knew this forest to some extent. He couldn’t fly overhead and drop down to earth so often without learning the rhythms of the land and its animals.</p><p>“I suppose you would be familiar with the creatures here,” she wondered.</p><p>“It’s simple enough to learn if one watches.” Felixi said. “You might soak it up if you spend enough time in this field, standing about.”</p><p>“I hope not. Look, since the foraging is turning worse, is there anything else you’d take for your hunting work? Household things? Medicines?" Rue tried to think of more to offer and found a fearful void. There were already Aloftway homes with walls missing boards, with waxed cloth tied over top to bind the wound.</p><p>Felixi slid his knife back into its holster. And he paused, flicking his tailtip through the grass heads. “Tell me another tale,” he said.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>He stood there looking at the daisy blooms, not seated on his tail but not flapping away, either. “Where would you be spending your time if you weren’t here, Rue?”</p><p>Wariness rolled over in her belly — wondering again who this fellow was, and how far the lonely mountain had sunk into his mind. Rue considered a barbed comment. But she had made enough of those already; Felixi was asking a simple enough question.</p><p>“I’d … likely be at the Tennel home,” she told him. She had a feeling Felixi wouldn’t want to hear about her own repeated wandering through trees. “With my family. What family I have here on the mountain, anypace. I don’t suppose you’ve met my father? Senford Wennering. I’ve got the same forehead he does, a little wide?”</p><p>“Your kind all do, relatively speaking.”</p><p>“Well, <span class="u">yes</span>.”</p><p>Felixi obliged her, turning thought-narrow eyes to her face, searching for resemblance. “I don’t recall anyone like that.”</p><p>“Anypace, it was Senford’s idea to plant Aloftway here in the mountains. My mother is here for her health, for the pure air and varied greens — she still hasn’t gotten her strength back from Avens, my smaller sister. It was a difficult birth.”</p><p>“Your house is only four?”</p><p>Four was a number Rue no longer took for granted. “No. Senford is away, looking for more korvi folk willing to join Aloftway. And Avens is back in Ordiny with my elder sister. So the Tennel house in Aloftway is only two strong right now — well, three if you count our ferrin friend.”</p><p>Two aemets and a recent-met ferrin. It sounded too sparse when Rue said it aloud. Even more sparse than the home's air, stirred only by Mother’s quiet shuffling for tea herbs and the boiling pail Denelend levered onto the hearth coals.</p><p>Felixi picked at his claws. “Gather some avens and it’s for healing folk, but your Avens weakened someone. Funny, isn’t it.”</p><p>Anger pricked red at Rue: only the plant called avens had a reputation for healing. Not the child. No one deserved a burden for a name. She settled for saying, “Avens didn’t mean to weaken her mother.”</p><p>“She didn’t?” Felixi smirked at his thumbclaw.</p><p>“No. You’re being a fool, aren’t you?”</p><p>The sudden quiet seemed like his answer. Breeze pushed between grass stalks; Feor’s breathing was a moist, even pattern. But still examining his cuticles, Felixi spoke, clear and even as lake water:</p><p>“I made plans before I was born. I decided I was going to run the moment I was free of my eggshell. I didn’t know where to. Likely because I had no idea what a place <span class="u">was</span>, other than the singular place inside my egg. Which was too cramped and dark to be doing any running.”</p><p>Rue watched the droop of his eyelids, and sensed the angle of his feathers in the air; she expected a grin and saw no trace of one.</p><p>“You … didn’t want to fly?” she asked.</p><p>“Not at all. I couldn’t even imagine such a thing.”</p><p>It could well be the truth. Every flighted creature in the land learned its legs before its wings, as far as Rue was aware.</p><p>“That’s curious,” she said. “Aemetkind don’t think much of anything before we’re born. Not even for a few days afterward. I imagine because there’s no air inside the womb — we don’t have a membrane to hold one of those bubbles of air, like the ones in the end of an egg? It takes a certain quantity of air to wake a child up.”</p><p>“Is that so?”</p><p>Keep talking, her innards knew. Felixi’s tail drifted nearer to the ground, and nearer, like he might sit and the stories might go on. What a gift pressed into Rue's hands, these nettles to be held carefully.</p><p>“I think so,” she said. “The earliest thing I remember is someone saying that I looked plenty alert for a two-day-old child. Those were the words he said: plenty alert. It turned out to be my father saying so… And ferrin must be the same way. A ferrin friend of ours said his first memory is of opening his eyes, and that takes at least three days.”</p><p>“Hmf. Quite a lot of difference, but we’re all full of life, aren’t we.”</p><p>It was true. Rue hummed.</p><p>Dancing his gaze around — anywhere but on Rue and whatever it was she embodied — Felixi took a hitching breath. He said, “If it’s such a frightfully large deal, I’ll take your bargain. Catch a food creature each... Hmm. Each eightday. It'll always be something large that grazes. You bring me a half-bushel of food on those same eightdays. I’ll tell you when I’m finished with the bargain.”</p><p>“You’ll just stop whenever you—?!”</p><p>She reined her tongue; Aloftway couldn’t afford a worse arrangement than this. And there was something gathered in this clearing’s air, one woven piece made of shared memories.</p><p>“Apologies. That’s … That’s fine, Velgarro.” She put a hand to Feor’s shoulders, to his solid presence connecting her to ground.</p><p>“I hope so,” he said flat. “Let’s meet at this same time, next eightday. This shade of daylight.” He turned a crooked smirk to the sky. “It’s the colour of rue flowers, wouldn’t you say?”</p><p>It was: a late afternoon light, fully yellow so the forest looked its greenest. “Why,” she asked, “do you think it’s a lucky colour?”</p><p>“Of course not. Luck is fool’s magic.”</p><p>Rue couldn’t hold back her grin. “Right. It’s just a time, then. I’ll have something for you, Velgarro. Don’t be late.”</p><p>As Felixi turned away, he nodded. It was a movement brief as a heartbeat, but Rue felt it an accomplishment anypace.</p><p>And he hesitated more while his wings spread, while the air broke around his quills. “You’ll have a harder time of your foraging,” he added. “Like I told you, it was dry, then small creatures were flushed from their usual places. The plains around this mountain are suffering, I think with some kind of blight. You’ll need to spend more effort on your foraging. Keep your dog close.”</p><p>And with no more ceremony, he flapped up and away. The grass battered flat and Feor recoiled at the gusting air, and Rue felt a chill as the air washed over her. She had been nearly enjoying herself in the honest company and now she was standing again in the grass and air, turning her thoughts back to a green village and its troubles.</p><p>“Huh. I suppose I could have a worse fellow to talk to,” she said to no one. Perhaps to Feor. She had the dog’s full attention again, his mud-puddle eyes and the uncertain wag of his tail. “Come on,” Rue said, and he followed.</p><p>Feor stayed fixed at her side while they walked toward home, along paths worn by Rue’s own feet.</p><p>“A half-bushel every eightday …” Rue murmured. “I’d best fill to the rim, or he’ll give me such a look.”</p><p>Feor stared and didn’t reply, because he was a dog. But pointless as her voice sounded, speaking for no person’s ears, Rue supposed she liked the thick sensation of a creature simply listening: it was another well-honed skill of dogs.</p><p>And far off from Feor’s fur and panting breath, a motion snagged her airsense. High in the trees, too large to be a bird or a squirrel. Large enough to stir branches. The movement jerked, pausing between leaps; Feor watched the green-lit canopy now, too.</p><p>The motion came close enough to hear, a rattling of tree branches like the ones in a ferrin’s wake. Definitely a ferrin: the creature was the right size and made the right lolloping motions. Foolish of Rue to startle at a small tree-dweller, as though they could be any threat to her. The ferrin came nearer with twitching whiskers, and finally, Rue caught sight of a grey-furred face peering down at her.</p><p>This was no one she had ever met. Rue asked herself a dozen times as she stared at the otherkind face, as the silence crept between them. This was no Aloftway neighbour and no one from Ordiny memories. The lack of a high-voiced greeting resounded; a crumb of excitement inside Rue told her <span class="u">newcomer</span>.</p><p>"Hello," she said.</p><p>This ferrin flicked his tail — bare along some of its length, the brush tip pushing lopsided through the air. He made a dozen precise motions with his ears. With tilted head and narrowed yellow-green eyes, he regarded Feor.</p><p>Perhaps he was wild; that notion struck Rue like slow lightning. Wild ferrin didn't speak words because no one had taught them how yet. This fellow was speaking with his body motions, but Rue certainly lacked the long ears for that and even if she had a pair, she wouldn’t know what to say. She stood mute while the ferrin eyed her, and eyed Feor again with ears folding slowly back. And then he turned and leaped away, back into the leaf-shaded distance.</p><p>It was a sinking feeling, sensing the ferrin bouncing away on branches. Someone familiar with Surgings Mountain, maybe raised here for his entire few years of life. Rue had certainly never met a town-raised ferrin with a bare patch on their tail like that. There had been one scarred ferrin in Ordiny, the Fayweathers’ small friend who had a pink scar stripe down her back — because she had lived wild before arriving in an allkind settlement. Before someone greeted her and gave her spoken words to use.</p><p>For that wild mountain ferrin a moment ago, maybe Rue's feckless <span class="u">hello</span> was the first conversational word he had ever heard. Someday, Rue would stop stumbling across new situations in this forest, but she doubted that day would be tomorrow.</p><p>Patting Feor’s neck — finding his hackles raised, but falling gradually — she watched the treetops that ferrin had vanished into. Wind stirred the space. Then Rue kept walking. If she ever ran across that ferrin again, she supposed she could try giving her name. Names were simple and, surely, everyone understood the fact of them.</p><p>Rue was sidestepping around a spiny plum sapling, minding Feor’s feet for him, when motion snagged her airsense again — another shape in the far-off leaves. On the ground. A dogshape, a blurring one that she had a real reason to fear. Through the spreading terror inside her, Rue stilled herself and pushed her airsense. Feor hackled immediate and the wolf stopped, a mirror shape. It dropped something — a limp ball, some mousekind creature falling onto leaves. The wolf sniffed at the air. It stood motionless. Then it picked up its small prey and left. Rue had been considered and tossed aside.</p><p>And she hadn’t succumbed to her running instinct, and here she still was. Her pulse beat inside her head; her bones and shell craved the wind, wanted her to run toward Aloftway but she hadn’t done that. What would have happened if she fled? She couldn't answer herself and she held the unsettled thought, held it for when she could think unfettered. She carried on and Feor followed reluctant, only when she commanded.</p><p>The forest was crowded today, with Felixi and less familiar forms. They were all chance gatherings of creatures, in greatest probability. Just whirling past one another like dry leaves in a wind’s eddy. It might seem portent to a woman who liked fate and luck, but Rue only felt the thinness of coincidence, of meetings without reasons.</p><p>She was spent, after dragging so many ideas in muddy circles within herself. She hurried home with Feor, her footfalls quick and thoughts going blank. Aloftway village called more welcoming than Rue ever would have thought.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Chapter 11</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Rue took long moments to soak in the presence of Aloftway village, the rooted sensations of homes gathered and neighbours near. All the things she seldom liked. She went to the garden plot behind the Tennel home and she began to kneel toward the nettles’ roots, before realizing she wasn’t yet finished with the busy forest. Her next errand was to seek Judellie, to fetch back the meat animal Rue had bargained so hard for. At least, she told herself, she could speak freely and factually with Judellie.</p><p>But Judellie’s flame-vivid feathers were nowhere to be seen in the Aloftway street. Folk told Rue she wasn’t about, frowning at the inconvenience they had to share.</p><p>After long moments, the other forager Dariend returned from the western slopes, his pouch half-filled. Last he saw Judellie, he offered, that friend was walking past the creek and on toward the maple-lined path to the west — that path so steep, she would need her wings soon enough.</p><p>What an odd choice for Judellie to make, wandering away when she knew Rue would be returning that day, asking for a vital errand. She considered asking Giosso to carry the dogs’ meat instead. Surely he could lift the deer's remains, too. Rue looked out at the westward trail and sensed expanses of clear air, a freer tumbling of the mountaintop’s breezes. No, she knew. She didn’t want to wait, or wonder.</p><p>And she didn’t even want Feor with her; she could imagine his slipping on such a steep path, his struggle on four eager feet. After a moment spent bringing Feor to the Middling circle, slipping the guard ring off her wrist and tightening it around Mother’s, Rue returned to the western trail. She decided not to ask for new favours. She just walked away from the village again.</p><p>She moved brisk but careful, downhill then uphill to avoid the steepest cliff angles. Trees were sparse here, the maple trunks like pins piercing the open air. Rue had no marked path to follow but the ground spread bare ahead of her, the leaf mould yielding mushy enough to give her sure purchase. This seemed a fine place for a korvi to wander — open as it was, with skylight spread warm across the brown leaves. Many of the trees had ragged stubs where branches ought to be, and those spaces let more light pour down.</p><p>Rue walked on, listening to her sliding, braced feet and the one firejay shrieking in the leaves. A sinking sensation gathered in her — the thought that she was forging ahead in the wrong direction. But within heartbeats of that came a wide, red figure: Judellie with her wings held open, a wary motion that helped her balance. And she held branches, a great bulk of them with her arms wrapped around.</p><p>“Judellie?” Rue called.</p><p>Her head jerked up, eyes wide enough to see whites. “Oh, Rue! I am sorry — I thought I would be finished sooner. My friend has been busy.”</p><p>“Your …?”</p><p>Smiling meek, Judellie pointed above Rue's head. There, in the crook of a branch, a scaly creature shifted like trying to wind itself tight enough to disappear completely.</p><p>“A … pandora?” Rue stepped backward for a larger fraction of a glimpse. It was a ball of mottled scales as rough as old-growth bark, the body of it as wide across as Rue’s forearm. Its eye appeared, glaring.</p><p>“If it is helping us find wood for the hearth, I think we should take the help.” Shrugging and readjusting her wood bundle, Judellie turned her gaze uphill, back toward the village. “Truly, Rue, I didn’t mean to …”</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>They turned back together. Following alongside Judellie, Rue wanted to offer her own help — but the wood bundle didn’t look like a strain. Judellie’s arms bound it like a string, the dense shapes of her muscles clear under her hide. So this was why Aloftway had so much good fuel wood for cooking their scraps with.</p><p>“You haven’t looked at the pandora,” Rue tried, “have you?”</p><p>“What? No! I know better! Ah, well, I looked at the same part you saw, I think that is its back. And it sent a nasty look at me, one time, but I didn’t see any belly scales. I don’t think I did …”</p><p>Rue stifled her smile. Strong Judellie was frightened of a lizard that simply sat in a tree giving baleful glances; legends could do that to a person. “Now, a pandora’s not a very good friend if you’re scared of it.”</p><p>“No, it is.” Judellie cast a suddenly earnest look at her. “It would take me hours to get enough hearth wood if that pandora wasn’t here. And I would have to rip at your trees.”</p><p>Rue had thought the same once before — that it was hardly fair to fear pandoras when they only gave to aemetkind: chewing branches down, plantcasting on the stubs, and asking for nothing but solitude. Ideas curdled in Rue. There were legends about pandoras that she knew weren't true because she saw a pandora once in the Ordiny woods, saw it walking slow along a branch and she had looked at its undulating belly scales for a whole three heartbeats. And she had lived perfectly well thus far. Deemed lucky, even.</p><p>She wondered yet again which forces were real, while the two of them climbed. And she asked Judellie, “Do you think this village has bad luck?”</p><p>“I do,” Judellie said immediate. “A little.” She ran her tonguetip inside her teeth; her feathers shifted minutely, a hackling too mild to be called that. “Don’t tell folk I said that, please.”</p><p>“I won’t.”</p><p>“Yes, you never fuss about gossip things,” Judellie agreed. “But, ah. The way everything has happened … I thought it would be easier to bring more korvi here. Folk who like a new challenge, you see? I always thought we dragonkind had more fire inside. And the forest here — it isn’t so thick! Look here, I can hardly see any shadows!” She shuffled her wings, a resigned set spreading along her mouth. Turning one earth-coloured eye to Rue, Judellie said, “I have been saving wood pieces. The very small ones — splinters?”</p><p>“Yes, splinters. Or slivers, I suppose.”</p><p>“Thank you. I thought that we wouldn’t miss such small pieces, and we could have some paper ready to trade. If no one minds it.”</p><p>Rue hummed. “I didn’t think paper could be made of only wood. Doesn’t it need cotton fiber?”</p><p>She recalled Mother packing travelling supplies, once when she was small enough to see details and know nothing about them. Rue didn’t recall what went into those paper packets — only the look of Mother’s narrow-nailed hands folding paper, her chitinous aemet skin over the cotton-and-pulp texture. She only heard the fact that those packets would keep things organized and dry in Father’s travelling pouch.</p><p>“No,” Judellie said, “paper can be from any plant. But making it out of trees is... complicated for folk. Well, I don’t need to tell you, Rue. Maybe wood paper would be a good gift for a mage?”</p><p>“You’d be better off using the splinters for kindling and saving your worry for something more useful.”</p><p>Judellie shifted more. Rue regretted her words, but she couldn’t regret the truth in them. When was the last time Aloftway had thought of small delights, of fine-spun new cloth for no reason, of cherry biscuits and honey candy on special days?</p><p>Together, Rue and Judellie cut sharper up the mountain slope, digging feet forceful into the yielding leaves and soil. One of them must have sped her pace so the other mirrored her.</p><p>Spitting a smoke-touched breath, Judellie said, “It’s only that— Well, Rue, I think we are of the same mind in some things. And Aloftway village needs to make efforts, yes? I think that if korvi asked other korvi—“ and Judellie threw a hand toward the sky, where those imaginary korvi folk might come from, “— then we might have better luck. I was planning to ask Giosso if he could watch the entire village. Just for a few days. I think I could fly fast enough if I threw all my fire into it, I could get to Hotrock Volcano and ask folk of our feather for help.”</p><p>The thought was a dropped boulder; it was a great weight of doubt falling into Rue’s gut so it wedged there. She recalled the spoken fact that a swift-winged messenger needed four days to reach Hotrock and return to Ordiny town — and that was to pass along a trifling hello-and-how-are-you, not to propose new homes and arrange new lives.</p><p>She asked, “You truly think …?”</p><p>“And if I saved some small things to trade, things like pieces of wood paper, then I could trade for their time spent!” Judellie was deflating, the feathers on her back falling as she looked to Rue. “There's no promise that there will be wings to share, though. It is how Hotrock towns work — all of them. Folk burn high, then low. Sometimes there are three dozen friends waiting around for an errand, and sometimes they are all scattered to the wind. So if I need to ask twice, the first trip will be a waste of—”</p><p>She snapped her jaws closed. The two of them entered Aloftway now, and Judellie’s bundle of wood was drawing neighbours’ eyes.</p><p>While Judellie passed out the firewood and beamed cheerful, Rue tried possibilities in her head and found them all too soft to be trustworthy. She couldn’t guess about the variables of korvi flight. However long it took to soar from one place to another, she couldn’t say whether this small, scared village could manage with a whole half of its korvi population gone travelling. And clearly enough, Rue had no inkling of what Hotrock Volcano was like and how folk there would answer a message.</p><p>As for what she did know, she did spend her time in the maple-majority forest. But she didn’t know the whims of the wolves, or the mysteries of demons and things like them. She couldn’t even guess whether Felixi would ever carry game into town for her — although, out of all the poor wagers, that was the one Rue would bet on. A smile touched her mouth at the thought. Felixi would surely hate the way his aid made such good sense.</p><p>With Judellie’s findings given out and folk heading into their homes to store the precious wood, Rue and Judellie carried on down the street and out into the forest, into Rue’s foraging territory. The interrupted conversation was an undigested lump between them.</p><p>“Pay mind, “ Rue said quiet. “I sensed a wolf on the way back.”</p><p>“Did it bother you?”</p><p>“No, it had prey. Something too small to fill its belly, though.” She spread her airsense out farther through the leaves, between the tree trunks she could sketch with her eyes closed.</p><p>After gulping a breath, Judellie blew pale smoke. Strange that smoke had ever been something to fear. This smoke hung between the trees like a curtain and they left it behind; Judellie blew another bursting cloud, and another.</p><p>“I don’t know if we could spare you for that trip, Judellie …” Rue said.</p><p>She shook her head, braids swaying between her solid, snake-curved horns. “If everything goes sour, I will do whatever you need from me. And I am happy to guard you and the others, but it doesn’t really <span class="u">fix</span> anything—“</p><p>With each crunching step, a tension gathered in Rue’s bones. “I know,” she said.</p><p>Judellie spoke more well-meant syllables, more air tripping crisp over her tongue — and beyond the two of them, wolfshapes moved in the undergrowth. Slipping out of the bushes’ cover, out into the open air of the daisy field. Toward the bulk Rue knew was a deer’s remains.</p><p>She lifted a hand. “Up ahead,” she whispered. “Wolves.”</p><p>Judellie hackled larger. “How many?” Her speaking breath rushed quiet up her throat, hot as fire.</p><p>Bodies moved in Rue’s far-stretched awareness, a tightening circle; one approached the deer’s mass and lowered its head, air disturbed in front of its nose. “I-I think … four.”</p><p>“That is more than I have ever …”</p><p>Rue should have brought Feor with her. It was poor planning to leave her trained guardian behind — but at least Mother was guarded right now. Rue had to stay rational and stop hoping, and she couldn't run, absolutely couldn't lose herself and run into wind-blindness. She yanked her senses to the immediate, to this physical place she stood; Judellie was here, a tense determination twisting on her face. And Judellie looked skyward. Fire heat built in her, rising hard up her throat and wicking along her arms.</p><p>“We can get another deer,” Rue said, unsure. But through the panic’s hum, she didn’t want practicality. A pinpoint light inside her wanted to flex claws like Judellie, to stand firm-rooted on this familiar soil, to defend what food they needed. “Or— Or we can—“</p><p>“I want to try something. Stand away, please.”</p><p>Judellie had found the hunters' spirit, Rue thought as she stepped back. It was present not just Felixi, but in this ordinary friend who lent her hands every day, who had thought to lift burdens so the cart horses wouldn’t struggle. Now, Judellie’s tail curled under her, her legs bunched and she leaped, wings flashing open to scoop air. She flew with a slapping of feathers against leaves, a wave of air and then she was over the canopy and away.</p><p>Rue stood fixed, her heart drumming, her airsense sharp as knives. She lost Judellie in the higher wind currents and then sensed her again, dropping like a thrown stone. The four wolves stood gathered and they moved their heads too late; a korvi fell on them all smoke and claws and wings beating the air.</p><p>The wolves snarled — their shock and anger ringing through the forest — and fire heat burst between all the moving forms. Rue wished again for Feor but the commands fled her memory. The churning movement separated: it was four bodies running now and through the ironwood branches ahead, black fur appeared, yellow eyes and mouths full of cutting teeth. The beasts ran at Rue.</p><p>Not straight at her, she knew in her scrabbling, panicking thoughts. She held her breath and gripped determination because she couldn’t run, she might be safer in these very footprints than anywhere else because she couldn’t know which way to flee, she couldn’t. The four wolves ran as one wide-spread body. Past Rue by a stone’s throw. Fur texture. Whining voices. And they raced onward, away, blending into the forest and disappearing, leaving shaken bushes behind them.</p><p>There was stillness again, and gentle shifting of breeze. Rue gasped a breath, pushed it out and took another. She was whole. She ran a hand up her forehead and over her braids, exhaling a trembling mass of air. She was tempted to think herself lucky.</p><p>“Rue? Come here, the meat is fine. Mostly …”</p><p>She shouldn’t have been considering luck at all, Rue told herself, a calming trickle of cool brine. She should find the right way to deal with a near brush if it should happen again. The pinpoint of courage still burned in her and it was suddenly a rash, useless thing. Aemet women like Rue had no knack for claws or fire. Just green things and cowardice.</p><p>Rue pushed herself to walking. She entered the daisy field’s open air, into a nudging breeze; Judellie was inspecting her own wrist and wiping it on the cloth of her cargo pouch.</p><p>“Are you all right?” Rue asked.</p><p>“One of them got teeth into me. This is nothing.” Judellie left the spot alone. It was barely bleeding, just two wet dots welling on her same-coloured skin. “I—“ She breathed a laugh, and grinned open-mouthed like Feor would. Smoke still turned her breath grey. “I was not sure that would work.”</p><p>Why did she do it, then, Rue wanted to ask bitterly. But she couldn’t. She was a cask full of sloshing awareness and she couldn’t have guessed Judellie’s chance of success in this gamble, either. But she was here and her friend was, too. And her trade meat laid on the ground, hardly gnawed at all. Rue only shook her head, unsure what to feel.</p><p>“If anything in the land is lucky, that must have been luck. What you did and the fact that it worked.”</p><p>“It’s an old korvi way! Long ago, we all hunted. And our wings and fire were for … that kind of thing.” She curled her hands into clawshapes, a poorly-sketched parody of what she had already done.</p><p>With a watery smile, Rue said. “Next time, though, I should find somewhere safer to stand.”</p><p>“Somewhere …?” Judellie’s eyes bulged. One hand rose to her mouth, its claw pose melting into a grasping fist. “Oh, Rue. I didn’t even think. They ran from me, straight—” and she pointed with a flat-held hand, grimacing as she saw more clear truth. “Oh, banish me! That could have …”</p><p>In this moment, thinking back on it like watching reflections in burnished metal, Rue couldn’t manage to feel bitterness anymore. Everyone ran out of time eventually, she had thought on calmer occasions. Her time to pass just wasn’t today. That fear-shocked moment was a wind blown past, no longer worth fussing about since that wouldn't unwreak it.</p><p>“Now, then,” she said. “Next time, I’ll climb a tree, I suppose.”</p><p>“And I will be more careful,” Judellie blurted. She paused, eyes drifting over the meadow grass without seeing it, and she bent for the deer carcass. “<span class="u">Merke ve vrelo boka</span> …We won’t tell Aloftway that I nearly lost you. All right?”</p><p>Pressing her mouth, Rue nodded. “What about that wound of yours?”</p><p>“What about it? Oh, it will stop bleeding in some moments.” Judellie's face scrunched determined and she declared, “I fell on a sharp branch. With thorns on it. Something like that.”</p><p>How terrible of some forest plant, hurting a friend of aemetkind. Rue tucked the lie into herself; this once, she wouldn’t mind keeping a secret.</p><p>She helped Judellie wind a strip of cotton around the deer’s head, covering the worst details of its story.</p><p>“I just had a thought,” Rue said.</p><p>Turning an eye to her, Judellie hummed curious.</p><p>“The wolves came so quickly after I left … What if they know? About the way I meet with Felixi to get a food creature, and leave it there unattended until you arrive.” It sounded like nonsense, like the fear that made people imagine demons around every corner.</p><p>“Do you think so?” Judellie stared wide at her. “Can wolfkind get ideas that way?”</p><p>“I don’t know. I haven’t sensed them near the meeting field …” Rue tried to fit herself into another body, into some four-footed creature watching peoplekind's puzzling lives. She supposed there would be a different array of senses to consider — sight and scent, and whatever a wolf could hear with their swivelling ears. She shook her head. “But I meet Felixi here regularly, then a food creature is left here for a few eightmoments while I fetch you. What if they know what I’m doing? What if they’ve watched me walking here, or smelled me or somesuch?”</p><p>“Smelled the prey creature while he is flying, maybe,” Judellie added. “Felixi carries it through the wind.”</p><p>Rue sighed. “I don’t know.” She recalled Feor standing inside the Tennel home, wagging his tail with joy before as Rue was near enough to airsense the motion clearly. That dog had a way of knowing more than Rue ever could — if only Rue could ask him about it.</p><p>“It only matters that the wolves know you come here,” Judellie decided. She regarded Rue with concern-deep eyes. “You should meet the Velgarro some other place. Or … or have more friends to guard you.”</p><p>“But I can’t. Felixi won’t meet more than one person at once. And if I take all of Aloftway’s dogs, what good are they in guarding the entire village? Same trouble if you and Giosso guard me together.” She had only just convinced the Velgarro to give her a few inches of slack, to arrive at a certain hue of light and to follow Rue’s wishes. How quickly would he end the bargain if Rue brought companions, ignoring his firmest rule of all?</p><p>Her brow furrowing, Judellie said, “Felixi of Velgarro should do more to protect you. Stubborn bit of …” She paused, and let the idea slip away silent.</p><p>Rue could see the sentiment. Korvi had such wells of strength to draw from, so why refuse anyone a cupful? If Rue had a well like that …</p><p>The comparison crumbled in her thoughts. She couldn’t say how much she would share if she were a wild, hunting korvi. She still couldn’t presume that she knew Felixi, not even after stories and bristle-edged smiles.</p><p>Judellie hefted the deer over her shoulder. Puffing smoke after each few steps, she said pleasant and strained that she could manage it fine.</p><p>So as they walked, Rue did what she could: she kept watch over the forest. Kept her airsense fanned out and sensing every leaf, every whirring of insect wings. She hoped to sense a wild ferrin, a friend with no plantcasting in their heart, because someone like that would be welcome indeed.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Chapter 12</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In a patch of sand laid by his own hands, Felixi mantled over his hearth fire for long minutes, minding some of Rue’s hazelnuts in a glaze-sticky pan. For all the trouble he took finding a bees’ nest and breaking it open, he certainly was burning most of his spoils. Sweets weren’t something he bothered with. Next time he decided to make a confection, he would remind himself of that fact.</p><p>But the smoke cleared quickly enough and his cave home only held a little of the charred inadequacy smell. Felixi poured the nuts into a scrap of soft hide, and sprinkled on the last pinch of salt he could glean from his empty salt pouch. Pausing, he stared at his damnable cookpan and then dumped a cupful of cleaning sand into it. For later. Then, with his fresh-prepared gift, he went flying over the mountain trees, on the knotting winds.</p><p>He went to the clearing in the mismatched patch of the eastern forest, the oak trees sheltered by a sheer face of rock. Striking green leaves with his quill feathers, then trampling brown leaves and cracking grass stems, he landed. The branches above him reached for clouds, their swaying branches tipped with the tiny beginnings of acorns. Soon, his friends would eat well — so long as Aloftway didn’t stumble across this place.</p><p>Felixi wasn’t much good at the greeting cry. His first try was gravel-rough, the sound of speaking for the first time in two days. He cleared his throat and tried again, his barking sound that was only vaguely like what wild ferrin barked to one another. And he called, “Felixi is here. It's safe.”</p><p>More barks answered him, approaching through the trees. Felixi imagined the sight of them — bending branches with each leap, hop-skipping over one another, a pattern he might have spotted from the air if he lingered. Felixi sat on his braced tail, and raked toeclaws through the powdery-damp leaf litter. He tugged the hide parcel open — because he wasn't sure how keen ferrin senses were, precisely, but the smell of fresh honey-roast would pique their appetites if anything would.</p><p>There came one waggle in the trees, then another. Dwo’s whiskered face appeared, smiling when he laid yellow-green eyes on Felixi. Ferrin voices rang out — a few happy cries of <span class="u">chek chek</span> — and then came a pause where they spoke in silent gestures.</p><p>The dear things may have had trade goods to drag with them — and shame on Felixi for having the slightest grain of impatience. He selected a glazed nut, turned it between his claws, and popped it into his mouth. It tasted faintly of charcoal; he supposed he should have checked his cooking more carefully before calling it a gift. No matter. It was food.</p><p>"Friends," he called, “do you have things?"</p><p>“We have things!" Chi's voice chirped as pleasant as any songbird's.</p><p>Rustling spread downward, and someone dragged a burden over crunching leaves.</p><p>"Ah, good.” Watching the bushes waggle, Felixi stood off his tail and knelt, folding himself shorter. “I was hoping you would have things for me.”</p><p>Aka and Zra emerged, matched like twin statues as they dragged a sheet of rot-edged bark. It was piled with white-gleaming bones, the remains of some hoofed creature.</p><p>"More bones? Good. And you've done a fine job cleaning them.” Felixi picked up a shoulder blade and held its chalky whiteness to the light. “I think these are from a deer.”</p><p>More ferrin trickled out of the underbrush: Enn, Serri, Pel, all light-footed and beaming.</p><p>"Deer," Chi said, following them into the daybright, canting her head. She remembered the word, with that canny mind of hers: she only said it now to taste it again. “All the big bones, here they are. And also...” Her face scrunched as a word escaped her. She sat on her haunches and touched her thumbs to her white-furred head, clawed fingers spread wide.</p><p>"Antlers," Felixi said. He turned over more bones — a thigh bone, then an ankle held together with a waxy lump of cartilage.</p><p>Chirping understanding, Chi squeaked to her comrades. Still holding rack-shaped hands to her head, she repeated, “Antlers.” The wordsounds echoed back to her, murmured and drawn out by the other wild ferrin, their ears twisting with thought.</p><p>"Here they are," Felixi said, spotting antler points in the tangle and pulling them free. He could get a good price for an six-pointed rack like this one, enough to supply him for eightdays. And during those eightdays, Felixi could forget that merchants and towns existed. He smiled a little. “Very good, my friends. These are hard to find.”</p><p>Thin fingers prodded his arm. Zra was impatient, as usual. “Food?"</p><p>“It smells like nuts,” Chi added, hopeful.</p><p>The others looked to one another, angling their ears with building excitement.</p><p>“These are hazelnuts. Cooked with honey and salt.” He put the hide parcel down, brushing its flap open to show the black-flecked morsels.</p><p>Happy ferrin made the strangest sound. Thin and shrill, like they had been bitten. But unmistakeably happy when Felixi was there to see their faces light up, and there to watch these seven folk cluster close, dipping hands into the package.</p><p>Aka squeaked a stern note, eyes darting over her comrades. “Keep. Soh to eat.”</p><p>A murmur ran through the group; their grabbing slowed.</p><p>"Soh is tired today,” Chi explained.</p><p>“Ah. I hope he gets better.” Felixi put the bones back in their pile; he could sift through them in some other moment. “Did you give him herbs?”</p><p>“Yes, good plants!" Chi shifted on her feet. “But he is too thin.”</p><p>Soh was the oldest of these ferrin. As elder creatures often were, he had been plagued by some persistent demon these past months, doubtless attracted to all the strain his kind soul had been under. Or maybe it wasn’t the strain, said a selfish little hope in Felixi’s heart. No, maybe this was simple age. He looked eighteen or twenty years old to Felixi’s eye, a ferrin life long enough to be proud of. No one could be blamed for that.</p><p>Felixi had a lot of nerve, thinking excuses to himself. Soh was thin and weak, which typically meant a lack of food — likely because of the many-faceted troubles of this mountain. Wolves’ usual meals were vanishing, and a clan of frightened aemets was gobbling up every shoot they could find. What a wasps' nest of trouble this mountain was. Felixi moved his eyes away from the clustered ferrin; they looked thin themselves, stretching wiry arms toward the nuts. Maybe his guilt was colouring his vision.</p><p>"Feed Soh, then. The apple tree northeast of here has fruit.” Felixi had made sure of it.</p><p>But he had clearly forgotten who he was speaking to, since even Chi tilted her head confused. He bit back a sigh and pointed northeastward. He would have to show the ferrin how to gauge directions sometime. It wasn't difficult to look at the Great Gem in the sky and relate its steady presence to directions: Felixi simply needed to find the energy to teach.</p><p>But the thought of food was gift enough for now. Chi lit with excitement and gulped down her half-chewed hazelnut to relay ideas to the others, waving her hands, sprinkling commontongue words like a spice. It was good to see them happy, chewing and swallowing, ears lifted with interest. They were a delightful bunch, they-the-eight. Even Dwo, although he was usually loath to admit it.</p><p>Felixi busied himself gathering the deer bones into bundles. The leg bones would make fine tools; the antlers would make beads and bangles; anything left over would be broken and burned for fertilizer. Perhaps he could make one large deal for the entire animal's remains. He thought of a few merchants' faces. Sour distaste filled him, but he knew better: he had to talk to folk sooner or later. He could only stay denned for so long.</p><p>"I'll come back tomorrow," he said, tying his just-in-case length of twine around a bundle of bones. “I'll bring more food.”</p><p>"Tomorrow? Good!" Chi smiled at him, and kept gesturing to her fellows. She was talking about a fallen log that might have grubs in it, if Felixi read her twisting hands correctly.</p><p>He nearly didn't notice Dwo shuffling closer — and a good thing he did, because he'd banish himself if he hurt that little fellow.</p><p>"I...” Dwo paused, hoping for words to come. Shaking himself — as if loosing the annoyance out of his fur — he gestured instead. Drawing straight lines away from his eyes. Scissoring his fingers like running legs. Standing on two feet with a straight back, and sketching wriggling meanings around his head.</p><p>"You saw someone? A person?"</p><p>Dwo nodded. He kept sketching, making long-arcing shapes away from his brows.</p><p>"An aemet. The bug kind of people.”</p><p>“Emm-met,” Dwo said. He stretched the wordsounds like candy stuck to his teeth.</p><p>“You must have gone far across the mountain to find aemet people. They live in a village. Growing plants.” Felixi mimicked aemetkind casting, placing his hands cupped over the soil, then raising them like drawing a plant's lifestrength upward and out. “And they have dogs. Dogs are like wolves, but … they are friends. Not danger.” With a pause to yank at his reluctant words, he added, “Maybe that aemet person you saw was a friend for you. You should say hello.”</p><p>Say hello and make new allies, and likely become curious about that tortured little Aloftway village and join strengths with it. Felixi still couldn't place whether he hoped it to happen. They-the-eight deserved the trees and the sky and all the earthly offerings of a purely wild mountain. But folk didn’t always get what they thought, in their souls, they deserved.</p><p>"Not friend," Dwo said, uneasy. <span class="u">Not a friend yet</span>, his twisting ears added.</p><p>"They won't be your friend if you don't say hello.” Felixi ached to know whether that aemet Dwo saw was Rue, the one with a keen little piece of intelligence to use.</p><p>More ear-twisting. Dwo never had liked scraping up words to say.</p><p>"Or go closer to them.” Felixi held up both hands and drew them together, like two folk nearing each other for a greeting. “That is good, too. The person will give you their hand to smell, like I used to.”</p><p>"Maybe.” Turning back to the others, Dwo clicked his teeth thoughtful and took another nut.</p><p>That was enough persuading effort for one day. Felixi tried his bundle of cargo, found every bone secure, and paused when he should have been hitching it to his pants waistband. The thought of Soh recovering was still a skewer dug into his heart. And his gift of nuts could have been better if he hadn’t botched the cooking.</p><p>"One moment," he said, and untied his carrying pouch from its ring. His fingers quickly found rag-wrapped deer jerky under his other possessions; if Felixi wrung some honesty from himself, he was getting tired of chewing the stuff. He knelt.</p><p>"This is for Soh.”</p><p>Chittering ran curious through the ferrin group. Hopping to Felixi’s side, Aka sat on her haunches and took the offering, sniffing delicately enough to vibrate her whiskers.</p><p>"It's deer meat,” Felixi said. “Food to make him strong.”</p><p>"Good of you," Chi said. A fond shine filled her eyes and it slammed something inside Felixi, some tight-sealing barrel of feelings like mulled wine. These ferrin didn’t need to thank him, and they certainly didn’t need to call him good.</p><p>He stood. “It’s the least I can do, friends.”</p><p>With a little more motioning and flexing of ears, they-the-eight added nuts to the jerky and refolded its wrapping. Like assembling a handful of a feast for Soh. At least that fellow would eat well tonight, and sleep well because of it. Maybe muster some strength.</p><p>Felixi told them farewell and sprang back into the sky. The wind nearly drowned away the farewell cries of his ferrin friends, their voices a glad chorus.</p><p>And the sound of joy rang in his ears until he flapped up through a buffeting wind current, one of the more vigorous currents of this demon-stirred place. Felixi fanned his fire hot and pushed his wings until he popped upward into calmer air, buoyant and freed. Before him was the south-facing plane of the mountain, a sheer wall of granite with ledges even the wyverns didn’t bother with. The ledge Felixi chose was too small to land precisely on; he had to swoop at the rock face and strike hard with flat-spread palms, then fall for a heart-gripping instant before he found rock under his crouching feet. And after a careful turn, a rearranging of all his limbs, he was seated. Blowing smoke that vanished instantly, he looked out over what seemed like an entire quadrant of the land. All the roadways and fields with specks moving over them. They were people, naturally, but even his far-reaching dragon eyes couldn’t discern which kind of people they were. Roadways and specks circled Surgings Mountain — like a tightening loop of snare wire.</p><p>There was a char-caked pan back in Felixi’s cave home. In this land, there were frets and regrets and folk who knew his long-buried deeds. But it was easier to forget here in the whistling wind. If he began to hear his memories keening in a few moments, he supposed he could move to a windier spot.</p><p>Felixi had tasks for the coming days. He would mind the grassy plains without being seen; he doubted those widening bare patches were made by peoplekind, not this early in budding season. Tiny motions dragged at his vision, the indeterminate peoplekind moving around the perimeter of a field some furlongs away — until a pillowy mote of red-lit smoke rose from one of them. A korvi using their inner fire, surely. Singeing away something that threatened the crops, which couldn’t possibly be a plant blight. Fire was for pest control. Whatever troubled the fields around Widely town might start creeping up the mountainside, and this mountainside had lost enough grazing matter already.</p><p>This sentry work wouldn’t need all of Felixi’s time. Neither would finding food for they-the-eight — since Rue was doing much of the food-finding on his behalf. Finding a hoofbeast for Rue would take time, but also not all of it. If Felixi was honest with himself, he ought to hunt a wolf.</p><p>An hour later, he left that ledge and flapped home with a coward's heart in his chest.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Chapter 13</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>It took a whole day of performing his wordcraft in the tunnel-towns of Hotrock, but Syril managed a string of trades so finely composed that if they were stones, they would all be a well-matched rainbow of gemstones shining in the light. Truly a productive use of a Reyardine’s time. With heavy pouches tied evenly around his pants waistband, he landed in Widely — with some hard-flapping difficulty, not that he would grudge it any.</p><p>Vraya’s building had a new door curtain swaying in the breeze. It was a showserve door if Syril had ever seen one: peoplekind figures danced all over the fabric, tiny painted mimicries of some grand festival, red and orange pigments streaking between them. This decoration would catch the eye — and, Syril seemed to recall, the door fabric was from a batch of particularly fine Twillhome cotton sure to last a lifetime. An aemet’s lifetime, anypace.</p><p>Brushing past the door, Syril looked around in the dim light, through the glowing spheres of candlelight on each table. Folk sat as usual, locals with their hands laid around cups of drink, eyeing the new statues placed beside each candle. Syril didn’t doubt that for most of the aemetkind locals, this was their first chance to see a clay figurine of Fyrian’s sacred snake holding a mouthful of tiny flags — showserve establishments being rare outside the Volcano and whatnot. They would learn to love the custom, Syril had not one speck of a doubt.</p><p>In the corner, at the smallest table, sat the delightful entrepreneur Syril was looking for. Vraya held a drink of her own, plainly nursing it and plainly wondering whether she should use it to water a garden plant instead.</p><p>“My good Anduille,” Syril crowed, inviting himself to sit. “If I had a thousand chances to guess, I wouldn’t have thought to find you sitting here like a quiet stone.”</p><p>She smiled immediately as she looked up. “Ah! Pleasure to see you, Syril.”</p><p>He peered at Vraya. “Are you well, friend?”</p><p>Grimacing gently, she shrugged. “It’s nothing. I just haven’t had time to stop and count my two horns, these past few days.” She tapped a claw on her cup, clinking gentle. “This is some potion the magelings gave me. It’s supposed to help bolster my energy.”</p><p>“If I were a gambling fellow,” Syril said hushed, “which I’ve been accused of before, I’d venture that your tonic isn’t as delicious as a fresh-baked honey pastry.”</p><p>Her smile returned. “That’s a kind way to say it. Ah, but I’m sure it has its uses.”</p><p>“You should just go flying, my friend. Get some wind under your wings! That’s the tonic aemetkind never thinks to suggest, and in my experience—“</p><p>“Wait, shhh,” she hissed. “This, I want to see.”</p><p>Syril blinked, and couldn’t begin to guess what she was talking about until he followed Vraya’s line of sight. Across tables, an aemet fellow with a familiar face was talking to an aemet Syril had never seen before. The stranger fellow was a newcomer to town, surely, and he was reaching for the showserve sticks for a reluctant first time. Perhaps still wondering what a showserve house even was. He chose a brown flag and slotted it into the snake statue’s curled tail, with a click of metal stick against hollow instrument.</p><p>A held breath of a moment passed. The aemet turned his attention back to his companion.</p><p>And on a silent cue, the performing ferrin swarmed toward his table. They tumbled around their summoner, sarongs flashing like flags, their high voices humming a scattering of base notes. Behind the bar, Vraya’s assistant picked up a ladel and sang in a well-tuned voice:</p><p>~</p><p>“Our greatest bowl of gratitude</p><p>The finest meal around</p><p>Enjoy this stew — our dancing, too</p><p>Here’s hope you like the sound”</p><p>~</p><p>Ah, but Syril could have joined in if he were the singing sort — because this song truly was a love-burnished classic in any showserve. The assistant came to his aemet guest’s table, bearing high a bowl of stew. He bent at the waist, a low bow with fanned wings— and ferrin leaped and rolled over him like greased raindrops. With a beaming smile, the assistant placed the stew bowl.</p><p>The performance ended as suddenly as it began, its performers melting back into their circuit paths and minor chores. But the newcomer aemet stared at the stew and at his surroundings with barrel-wide eyes, and kept a hand pressed to his mouth but not nearly enough to hide his smile. Syril caught the motion of the experienced aemet’s mouth: <span class="u">You see why we came here?</span></p><p>At Syril’s side, Vraya clasped her hands together, giggling as light as air. “I never get tired of seeing it,” she said. “Never at all.”</p><p>“I must say,” Syril agreed, “and I’ll say it twice if you’d like: that’s a show to be proud of!”</p><p>“I’ll venture to keep it running! Those aemet fellows? One grows a big portion of corn for me, and the other just started up a pigeon-breeding venture. They’ll be providing some of the showserve meals.”</p><p>Corn farmer and pigeon breeder, Syril etched into his mind. They might be valuable additions to his merchanting lists.</p><p>“Fine to know! And while we’re speaking on the subject of trading, I’d best get this pouch off my waistband and onto yours!“ Syril put his claws to a knotted cargo pouch.</p><p>“Ah!” Vraya brightened, pushing her tonic aside. “Glad to see you’ve found it so soon! Oh, and put up a flag if you’d like. We’ve got a little blackcurrent cordial left.”</p><p>Good Vraya couldn't forget a patron's favourite flavours if she shook the entire contents out of her head into the street dust. It was what made travelling to the eastern land such a pleasure, if Syril had to pick one highlight in particular. “That would be a fresh-milled morsel of a delight, friend!” he said, “Ah, but I’d rather forgo the musical production, if that’s fine and well.”</p><p>Vraya called, “Seeleri? Kindly bring this fellow a cup of cordial. Bring it plainly.”</p><p>One of the ferrin listened with raised, attentive ears, and she hurried to obey.</p><p>Syril appreciated the thought of a drink — truly he did, since his throat was well-weathered from flying — but he did grow eager at the thought of a trade. He opened his cargo pouch to display its contents. “Now, here’s a bundle you’ll want to share with your neighbours: ten handfuls of salt — and I do mean heaped handfuls measured by a korvi — plus two knuckles of fresh-picked calendula. And there’s a little rosemary, as well — eat it yourself or turn slugs’ stomachs with it, whichever stokes your fancy.”</p><p>“Perfect,” Vraya said. She accepted it, rolling the pouch farther open to look upon the contents. “I know just who needs it. Thank you, friend.”</p><p>“Ask it of me anytime, good Anduille! It was only a little trouble, winging far enough from Widely to find these things. You see, I know a fellow with a vigorous patch of calendula in his garden, but he had just traded the whole of it to his friend’s brother and if he was to plantcast again, he needed—“</p><p>Lifting a hand, Vraya smiled wide. “Now, Syril. I’m the one who searched out information.”</p><p>“Well and true!” He straightened into a more contrite listening pose, his back straight and his ears open wide in a manner of speaking. And he accepted the cup of drink that ferrin, Seeleri, held up for him. “So, then! Tell me a fine-spun tale of Aloftway.”</p><p>Counting one finger with another, Vraya said, “For beginnings, they’re a village made of folk from Ordiny town. Mostly from Ordiny, that is — you know how friends drift in from all corners. They made their ground-breaking effort three years ago and brought a sizeable heap of supplies with them. Plenty of wagonloads were sighted being dragged up that mountainside. And an aemet soul named Amarantha was meant to lead the place — daughter of the Neward line, she already knew bright and dark healing. So I’d imagine it all seemed a fine idea at the time.”</p><p>Syril recalled the strange, roiling wind above that mountain. He shifted his wings to smooth his own hackling back.</p><p>“But they don’t have one whole handful of korvi,” Vraya went on. Her eyes widened, deep lakes of worry. “They went ahead and began the village with two dragonkind — just two! There was the one korvi who brought a hello-and-how-are-you to the mage, and talk of another fellow who keeps bees. If anyone else has joined Aloftway, they haven’t told us of the fact. ”</p><p>Which meant Aloftway was capable of precious little trade — certainly no fresh goods that needed wings’ quick transport. Syril took a handful of his bracelet beads, turning the soothing surfaces between his fingers. “I couldn’t explain why folk do that, my friend. Start villages without us, that is! And for another matter, have you felt the winds over in that direction? Strangest I’ve ever flapped on in all my eighty-five years!”</p><p>Curling her hands around her cup, Vraya let thoughts knead emotion over her face. “I hadn’t thought it sounded like an ideal place to live. It's always some trouble convincing anyone to fly to Surgings, to check on troubles or whatnot. But I suppose it's different for folk who do all their travelling in the lowest bit of air.”</p><p>“Or just for korvi who like a tough strip of a challenge to sink their teeth into when they're flying," Syril said. “Friends like that do exist and the gods do witness it. Well, any way it's shaped and sliced, there’s got to be someone in this whole great land to help those Aloftway folk! But those folk might be shrimp hiding in a whole lake of mud, if you see my point.”</p><p>“Sounds likely,” Vraya agreed. “The other trouble is that a wildfire took hold of the mountainside some months ago. A wide patch of the eastern side went up in smoke.”</p><p>“I thought as much! That part of the mountain looks a shade bare.” Glancing to the aemet patrons nearby, lowering his voice, Syril asked, “Do we even know if Aloftway is, ah, still with this land?”</p><p>“We didn’t see even one soul running, so there couldn’t have been an exodus.” Regardless of the good news, Vraya tightened her mouth fretful. “Our mage had a fellow fly over and look. He said there was a great patch of ashes but nothing that looked like burned homes. It was the oddest thing, though — there wasn’t a cloud in the sky that day, certainly no thunderclouds. It must have been started by a firejay or somesuch.”</p><p>A small village folk couldn’t even find, with no trade to speak of, and their foraging space had been burned smaller: that sounded like a cup full of misfortune to Syril’s ears.</p><p>“Truly,” he said, “no one has been to visit?”</p><p>“No one from Widely. The Chermond sisters saw a wagon headed up the mountain just over an eightday ago.”</p><p>“Oh?”</p><p>“Yes, full of dogs. It must have been the breeder fellow from Wanderwhen.”</p><p>A lump of dread sank in Syril’s gut. “Tell me that’s not so, Vraya.”</p><p>She blinked. “Why?”</p><p>“Well, follow my thread of thought for a moment, if you would. It doesn’t sound as though Aloftway is in the green of health, or else they’d surely be sending out travellers and seeking to trade their wares. And dogs have a more pressing need for meat than folk of our feather — there’s no convincing them to live on spinach instead, that’s as true as the sky is wide. So if you take that struggling community, ask it to spend its grains and efforts on feeding food creatures for dogs, then what happens? The entire structure collapses! Straw pile with a stone dropped on top! It’s a dreadful idea, gods help whoever thought it up.”</p><p>“Oh,” Vraya said soft. She paused, that weight settling in her thoughts. “They haven't got deer up there? Nurls in the lowlands, perhaps?”</p><p>“I should hope they’ve got something. You still have that hunter fellow flapping about near here? Yellow feathers, sour twist to his mouth? What was his name?”</p><p>“Felixi of Velgarro, you mean?”</p><p>“Yes, he’s the one!”</p><p>Vraya smiled as though she had stepped on a tack. “They say he's difficult.”</p><p>“Oh, I can vouch for that much! Terribly tight-strung. Ask him for a trade and it’s like you’ve asked for the Greatbloom's petals freshly picked.” Syril recalled the mountainous silence he had received from that fellow, asking about a few knuckles of herb — which was a perfectly reasonable proposition to offer someone passing over the forest.</p><p>Nodding slow, Vraya said, “Felixi is still in this corner of the land — he visits the outskirts of town a handful of times each year, to trade for salt and odd ends. I’m not sure he’d be a lot of help supplying fresh food to a village, though.” Vraya sipped her tonic, a liquid pause. “Or, well, perhaps he would. I don’t know him. I can’t swear by more than I’ve heard.”</p><p>Neither of them could. It wasn’t often that Syril felt his information lacking and gods around, he disliked the sensation. He took a deep drink of cordial and found it zestfully tangy.</p><p>“Oh, here’s some news you might actually like, though,” Vraya added. “Have you tried searching for Aloftway? While you're flying here?”</p><p>“I’ve looked, and I haven’t seen anything but leafed things!”</p><p>“Well, I asked around and <span class="u">thought</span> I hadn’t learned anything. No one’s actually been to Aloftway — except one aemet forager, I haven’t seen him about for months. But according to one truthful tongue,” and Vraya leaned in, tight-wound, “The Aloftway korvi who brought a greeting to our mage? Her exact words were that Aloftway <span class="u">sits at the foot of the sky</span>.”</p><p>It sat meaningless in Syril’s mind for a moment. Then he was lightningstruck with understanding. “<span class="u">Padre-dre-siel</span>?” he asked.</p><p>“Yes! And Surgings Mountain has those tall lichen cliffs at its peak?”</p><p>Aloftway sat at the foot of the sky — which made hardly a drop of sense in commontongue, since the word was <span class="u">cliff</span>, not <span class="u">foot-of-sky</span>. Grinning like a dog, Syril said, “So the village is high up, then? I suppose right where the forest tucks up tight against those sheer cliffs with the worst of the wind?”</p><p>“That must be why no one’s found it,” Vraya agreed. “If the visiting fellow told aemet friends that she was visiting from the foot-of-sky, they likely didn’t catch her meaning.”</p><p>“Gods help me, I might not have caught news that slippery,” Syril admitted. “Well, untie a knot and call it a puzzle solved! I’ll bring you more fruit for cordial when I can, my friend — for such fine information as that!”</p><p>“Oh, don’t mind it!” She laughed with her eyes. “Get some trade headed to and from Aloftway, and I’m sure someone will bring me something to make a drink out of. I wouldn’t mind trying more green-leaf cordials.”</p><p>With a revelation like that, Syril felt washed, dried and new all over. He tapped claws on the tabletop. “The winds wouldn’t be so bad if I have an idea where I’m flying to … I <span class="u">am</span> thinking of dropping in on the place with a pouch of supplies, to be clear as air.”</p><p>“If their situation is as unbalanced as you say, with the dogs? I’d imagine they’d welcome you kindly.”</p><p>"That's a pouch stuffed full of truth! This is why I speak with you, Vraya. That and your wonderful beverages — not one word of untruth, Vraya, this is your most delicious batch of current cordial yet.”</p><p>She laughed musical. “Thank you!”</p><p>“What is this sour snap at the end? Sumac? I’ll wager it’s sumac.”</p><p>“It’s seasoned with love.” Her smile spread mild as plains hills. “I just spoke kind words to it.”</p><p>Clearly enough, the Anduille legacy of drink recipes was not up for trade at this moment.</p><p>Taking her tonic cup into both hands, Vraya confessed, “I wouldn't mind seeing Aloftway for myself, after all the talk about it. But for the moment, my time’s all going to cooking meals for everyone in the fields. Oh, embers!” She hurried to put her feet under her. “I’ve got corn to shuck! I shouldn’t be perching here.”</p><p>“Worry not, good Anduille — I’ll scour that mountainside and pay Aloftway a visit. They’ll have a Reyardine to ask for whatever they need!”</p><p>“That’s good of you, Syril. You can pass along our apologies, as well.” Vraya waved a hand toward all of everything outside, to fine-built Widely still standing. “I’d wager that our mage has some apologies to give.”</p><p>Charity work: that was what Syril planned on doing. Not even in the face of some fearful plague demon but just because he had some rumours poured into his ears. This would have to be planned careful if he wanted it to be worthwhile. He had already taken lighter trade flights while sorting out this Widely gasterslug business and getting Vraya’s best knowledge of rumours. But he had a better chance of finding Aloftway now, better than when he aimlessly happened by. Gift a pouch full of delights to Aloftway now and, sure as rain, those folk would think of Reyardine House whenever trading time did come. Yes, that would be favourable indeed. Kind, as well. Someone told him once that kindness was the hearth fire warming all the land — and mawkish though the thought was, Syril couldn’t bring himself to entirely disagree. He was no heartless beast.</p><p>In that case, Syril asked himself that night in the dark, what would a clever merchant bring to a tiny mountain village? What, out of all the things in the land, would aemets want after a few years spent in mountain wind? The clever merchant would bring dried corn, likely. Syril might chance bringing potatoes or thornwood if Aloftway had been founded one or two years ago. But three — three years was long enough that the residents had sure-rooted gardens and, more to the point, they still sorely missed a grassland feast of corn.</p><p>But why guess what that budding sprout of a village wanted? Syril already knew. They wanted their roving fellow back — and with a few well-placed questions in some centrally-located villages, Syril might just get fresher word about Senford Whatever-his-name-was. Quite a favourable errand that would be, and he could surely find a pouchful of food along the way. Oh, Syril had learned well from his house, sage bunch of jays that they were.</p><p>Grinning at his thought — that a clever Reyardine could always cobble a plan together out of splinters and scraps — Syril took wing.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. Chapter 14</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>For all Rue worried, Felixi kept his word, bringing meat for the dogs next eightday, and further eightdays after that. The stink of burning bone wafted through the village on those days; charred fragments and powdery ash were added to the garden soil outside each home. Rue had prepared for the possibility that she would need to tell folk to do that, but the soil was fertilized without her speaking one word.</p><p>Some nights, they could hear eerie, long-held notes in the distant trees, echoing off the cliff rock. Wolves hunting, no doubt. Or else demons with voices like fear.</p><p>Before each visit to the daisy field, Rue spent two days foraging for travel food. She now remembered every nut tree within a furlong; marking them onto her map was an afterthought, a formality for no one but herself.</p><p>With dogs seen in the street as often as the two sturdy korvi, folk put more calm focus into their garden plots for nearly two months. The guard dogs had grown marginally since they came off a travelling cart: they stood as tall as an aemet’s hip already and were now thick with living muscle. Feor was feeling ever more like a dense, full-grown beast but his eyes stayed the same: focused on Rue and flicking often to the guard ring.</p><p>Feor did follow anyone who held that ring. He proved it with Mother — but Rue suspected that he just liked Mother, the way she rubbed furred ears and murmured love-soaked words. He proved it with Denelend, eyeing the guard ring and then turning close attention to his temporary master — one could pick up in his jaws if he cared to. And the dog proved himself finally with Judellie, trotting evenly at her side while she walked the town street, away and out of sight. Even before they returned, Rue was satisfied. She liked the possibility that Feor would follow anyone with sense, not necessarily herself.</p><p>Judellie returned and, halfway down the street, she faced Feor. <span class="u">Stay</span>, she said on a warm breath like hearth embers. It caught Feor mid-step and he faltered, and looked to Judellie and her guard ring. But he stopped and held. He watched Judellie’s winged back leaving him behind.</p><p>“You’re doing a good job of him,” Judellie said, returning the guard ring to Rue’s hand. “Are you two going foraging today?”</p><p>“Yes,” Rue said. “Mother is growing spinach, but I don’t think her casting will be enough. Feor, <span class="u">here</span>.”</p><p>Judellie spat a sigh. “I will tell all of you until you listen: ask me and I’ll take you out foraging.”</p><p>It was the sensible thing to do, except that nothing seemed wholly sensible anymore. Every action had a downside. Rue looked away brief — to the gardens now rooted between and behind every Aloftway home — and she gave eager Feor a pat on his neck. “I know. I say that to folk whenever I can. But why would any aemet take a risk when we can just grow something in the garden, enough for that night’s stewpot?”</p><p>“How is Brenne holding up?” Judellie stared worried, her voice falling to a careful hush. “She looked tired, last I saw her.”</p><p>Brenne had been preparing elixers for her villagers’ fatigue, medicines to delay the inevitable. She kept asking Rue to forage managrass, and coneflower, and young nettle stems, and perhaps just a sprig more of that managrass.</p><p>“Folk can’t keep this up,” Rue sighed. “We’re at least keeping the soil fed, with all these bones we’ve been crushing up, but— Well, if aemetkind could live forever off our own casting, we wouldn’t need to forage to begin with.”</p><p>“You’re eating your leg to feed your belly, hmm?”</p><p>“Something like that.”</p><p>“And you’ll never talk folk into coming here to live, if this is a place everyone stays in the town streets because the forest is dangerous.” With a shake of her head, Judellie hissed, “Rue, I’d claw those wolves myself if I saw them. They’ve ruined this village — why couldn’t they go find some deer?”</p><p>“There’s got to be a reason,” she said. And she paused, feeling the space of Aloftway all around, sensing the mundane motions of bodies. “For what it’s worth, Felixi doesn’t argue with me so much anymore.”</p><p>“You wore him down. Like a river rock.”</p><p>Rue couldn’t help smiling — at the thought of the rock-flat face Felixi gave her when she talked too much. “Well, once I’m done with him, I suppose I’ll go wear the mountain paths down. I’ll have this whole mountain levelled in a few clicks.”</p><p>Judellie laughed, a crowing in the quiet air. “After all that trouble moving to a tall mountainside, too! There’s something to be said for working too much, Rue.” She sobered, fussing sudden at a tie in one of her feather braids. “Ah, but if you give Feor to anyone else and you need protecting, tell me, yes?”</p><p>“I will. Take someone out foraging, will you? Maybe they’ll go out if you bring up the idea. The south-east might be worth checking.”</p><p>“I’ll try,” Judellie said. And she ruffled Feor’s ears, and took her leave.</p><p>The next day, in a cool, windy morning, word spread panicked between neighbours: the elder Enerham sister was dead. Caught by wolves. She likely hadn’t been able to run, on her bad knee growing worse.</p><p>When Rue heard those bits of hushed voices she turned her feet toward the mages’ home.</p><p>The chromepiece stood unattended, its tin dandelion leaves alone in the air. Behind the mage home, Amarantha’s form bent over the garden plot and its dinner-bound dandelion leaves.</p><p>“She’s been minding those dandelions for an hour now,” Brenne said hushed. Her fists worked the expanse of Giosso’s back, kneading the curved edges of her knuckle nails through yielding feathers. “What could she be doing? It only takes … Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter. I’ll be there once they’re ready for funeral words. Mara doesn’t need to fret about it.”</p><p>“Mara …?” Rue asked.</p><p>“Yes, she hasn’t been answering me if I’m not calling her that. Folk called her Mara when she was a child. A girl shouldn’t have a name longer than her antennae, someone said.” Breathing a weak laugh, Brenne looked into the depths of Giosso’s down feathers. “Imagine fussing about something like that.”</p><p>The silence stretched. Giosso glanced past his golden-orange wing at her and, hesitating, said nothing. In this moment, Rue wished for Feor to pat; leaving the beast with Mother for an hour had seemed like a fine idea at the time.</p><p>“I should be in the forest today,” Rue said, “instead of attending the burial … I’ll bring back a full pouch.”</p><p>“That’s fine, dear,” Brenne hurried to say. “I’ll say last goodbyes on your behalf. Gods know we need meals for ourselves and meals for the dogs. Seek some managrass, too, if you would?”</p><p><span class="u">And coneflower, and young nettle stems, and perhaps just a sprig more of that managrass</span>, Rue added inside her head.</p><p>“I’ll try. The coneflowers were all eaten clean yesterday, down to the soil. A lot of ferns, too, and some tree bark — all in patches. I thought at first that someone was reckless in throwing out lye water, but there wasn’t a strange trace my tinctoring could find. What creature gnaws things cleanly like that?”</p><p>Brenne thought, leaning harder on one massaging fist than the other. “Chewed right down to the earth? It wouldn’t be deer, they always share a little casting. If a plant dies,” she said in sure, recited words, “a deer is never the cause. Gasterslugs, perhaps? Oh, I hope we don’t have any of those.” Her face twisted like rope. “Quite a tough spot you’ve got here, Giosso. Rue, look for some arnica, if you would?”</p><p>“I don’t think I need arnica,” Giosso said quiet. “I’ll be fine.”</p><p>“It’s just in case,” Brenne told him. She tried the lower edge of his bulging wing muscles, hummed an unhappy note, and leaned again. “Easier to keep you in flying shape than to get you back into it. Here, Rue — sit yourself closer and watch what I’m doing. If we get some more korvi friends living under the trees, we aide types will need to stop their wings from stiffening up.” She sucked in a sorry breath. “<span class="u">When</span> we get more korvi friends. Shame on me.”</p><p>Shifting a few steps closer and sitting again, Rue asked, “You’re still counting on extra wings arriving?” This close, she could sense every mote of air jostling between Giosso’s feathers, their flat surfaces unzipping as aemet nails wedged through.</p><p>“I’m counting on it,” Brenne said immediate. “We’ve got to have faith in your father and the original agreements we all made. Any more rash decisions and I might add more burdens to this village.”</p><p>Burdens like the dogs, who guarded a basket full of foraged shoots and needed a basket full of meat in return. Rue still wanted to pat her dog and it was a guilt-touched feeling.</p><p>“You don’t think we should try … anything?”</p><p>“Not unless we have a well-thought plan. One we can rely on. And we know we can count on korvikind.”</p><p>Giosso shifted. Behind the wall of his wing plumage, his face shifted, smiling bashful.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Brenne said, glancing to Rue. “I lost my string of thought, didn’t I? Keep watch for any sign of what’s eating the plants. There seems to be less food on this mountain every day …”</p><p>They were sitting in one bloodless place, noticing the lack of food and the dearth of aid — and no one seemed inclined to fix it. What could be accomplished if they spared a few folk to work on new efforts? Plenty. But there wasn’t a slack knucklewidth to be spared. The two korvi and four dogs shared a tall mound of guard duties; the village ferrin brought what they could from nearby treetops, their electricasting rippling uneasy in their fur. And what of the aemets? They would stay cringing in their green fields until they finally panicked, finally dropped everything and ran. Rue could face downhill and walk to a neighbour town by her damnable self, but she was a tool promised to another purpose — to foraging in the danger-tainted forest each day from brightrise to darkfall. No one was lucky enough to do it for her.</p><p>With a spark burning in her gut, Rue watched the rest of Giosso’s treatment without a word to say. She needed something and couldn’t say what.</p><p>Once, Brenne had described Aloftway’s troubles as a demon. She was right, Rue knew as she left the mage home. A demon drifted over Aloftway, touching everyone with fearful claws. But it wasn’t a terrible legend beast so much as a problem, something as large as wildfire smoke that no one knew the shape of. Like the fire, though, it was simply events and troubles that no one knew the whole of. Rue ought to find the problem and learn its nature. She had a mind and a will — so why shouldn’t she?</p><p>Beyond her smoke-thick thoughts, Rue sensed a change in the air. A vague sense, at first, but then a discernible shape in the air drew closer: it was a korvi flying in, pushing their wings through the hard-rushing air currents, bearing cargo pouches that swung wild. The sensation drew closer and it stayed real. Rue stopped walking, heart swelling glad, her eyes snagged by a flash of red and metal above the trees. That passing korvi had finally arrived. Other folk watched, too, aemets pausing to sense, voices shouting excited. There was a new korvi arriving in the Aloftway street — once he found a clear enough place through the trees. Aloftway’s main street was well sheltered by branches and Rue had never truly noticed until now. She hurried to the fluttering, landing fellow — quicker than her neighbours, quick because she was already fired with ideas.</p><p>Near the western end of the street, where the tree cover thinned, the korvi dropped to a flapping, hard-striking landing, his bead jewellery swinging and jingling. He straightened, horns held high.</p><p>“Ah,” he said in a gasp, “Quite a flight that was! If I’ve ever met winds like that before, it was enough to rattle the memory straight out of my head!” He bowed, fanning his wings as far as the crimson feathers would spread — definitely a performer, this fellow. “But without a further fence built around it, good day, friends! I’m Syril of Reyardine. Ask for the name, whatever you need! Have I managed to land in Aloftway?”</p><p>Rue blinked. “Yes,” she said. She couldn’t place who this showy fellow was talking to; perhaps he was performing for everyone in the street, all the folk behind Rue who drifted nearer.</p><p>“Fine and wonderful!I’ve come from all over the eastern land and I’ve got plenty to offer! Goods, news, and combinations of the two!” He blinked at Rue. “I’m supposing you’re not the mage, friend?”</p><p>“You’re supposing correctly. I’m Rue Tennel.” She was keenly aware of the fact that she was the mage’s helper, the village finder of things. “And this village, erm. Aloftway welcomes you, good Reyardine. We’d like everything you have. Particularly the news.”</p><p>He shone with pride, chest swelling. “Everything I’ve brought with me today is for scant trade, friends. Offer a kernel and I’ll give you three in return!” Grinning as if to show off his teeth, Syril added, “Since this is the first occasion I’ve visiting Aloftway, I thought it’d be a fine occasion for gifts.”</p><p>Murmuring rose from the other villagers, a low and muffled thrill.</p><p>“We’ll fetch the mage for you,” Rue said. “And … there’s someone who would like news. I’ll be back in a moment.”</p><p>Folk were already hurrying away, calling friends and kin. And Syril was already opening a pouch to show its contents. “No trouble,” he warbled.</p><p>With Feor at her side, and Mother clinging nervous-tight to her opposite arm, and Denelend lolloping ahead, Rue returned to the street. Neighbours still clustered around the Reyardine, his mane feathers and horns standing above everyone else’s antennae.</p><p>“Well, let’s make this deal,” Syril was saying. “Bring me your part of the bargain before tonight and I’ll add another handful of dried corn for your trouble!”</p><p>The folk around him took breaths of surprise. Even Rue liked the thought of a good corn meal, she had to admit. Stewed until it tasted like her former home.</p><p>“And I’ll be here until nearly duskfall, lay that thought down and bury your worries under it!”</p><p>“Pardon me, good sir,” Mother said. She released Rue’s arm, and patted it sure. Then the fragile head of their patch-quilt family moved on short, cautious steps, approaching the Reyardine; neighbours parted to make room, frowning concern at her. “I was hoping for some news.”</p><p>“And I’ve got news I was hoping to share, madam!” Another fanning of his wing feathers. “Is there any word in particular you’d like to hear?”</p><p>“I am Elova Tennel, mother of the northmost Tennel home. And my husband has been gone for long years now, missed terribly by our community. Have you heard any word of Senford Wennering?</p><p>Syril closed his wings, his grin losing luster. “Oh, ah. A pleasure to meet you, good Tennel! I do have word of that fellow. It’s not much pleasant, though...”</p><p>“Oh,” Mother choked. Her hands rose to her mouth. “Has he …?”</p><p>“Has he what? Died? Oh, skies above, no!” Syril’s grin returned; his back feathers stayed hackled like he was lightning-touched. “I suppose I did make that sound quite a bit like the good fellow had— Well, let’s sort out this muddle right here and now! Senford Wennering is certainly still with us. He’s in Rovingful village right now, to the southwest, that’s three days’ flight away on exceptionally quick wings. He sends his regrets for not returning to you, and an even larger pile of regrets for not sending a messenger before this moment!”</p><p>Syril was embellishing his message, Rue suspected; Father didn’t let his regrets build up into piles. Not the Father she remembered, anypace.</p><p>“Is he all right, though,” Mother asked small.</p><p>“His foot is in a wretchedly bad way, I regret to tell you, Elova. When I met him, he was laid flat in a bed and not about to change that anytime soon. He’d nicked his foot one night, he told me — you see, he had been staying in a good family’s offered home and they’d been breaking up some thornwood for the hearth. A whole bush of it, something about root rot. It was quite the mountain of a task, I suppose, and they hadn’t had a proper chance to sweep up and wouldn’t you know it but Senford stepped on one of the sharper thorns. He said he just pulled the thorn out and paid it little mind, tiny nip of a hurt that it was. He carried on with his walking journey, hoping to walk a hundred furlongs that day if he walked a single one. Quite the determined fellow, I must say! I’d have liked to talk with him for four days longer.” Scratching his mop of mane feathers, Syril said, “Ah, but at any pace, the next thing he knew, his pace had slowed like honey gone dry. He had a terrible limp by the time he reached Rovingful.”</p><p>“He’s being healed now?”</p><p>“Ah, well, with the gods’ luck, the mage is hoping to save his leg—”</p><p>Mother choked again.</p><p>“—And she is a talented mage,” Syril blurted, “very talented! Burn me now if that’s not the truth! I once saw her charge seventeen casting stones without even needing to catch her breath! Truly an exceptional fellow, I’m sure she can make <span class="u">quick</span> work of a rot demon. Ah, but I suppose the long and short of this is that Senford won’t be travelling back here any day soon.”</p><p>Shuffling closer to Mother, putting a hand on her back that wasn’t nearly comfort enough, Rue asked, “Did Senford say how his seeking was coming along? Before his foot trouble, that is.” If there was any fairness in the land, Father's efforts must have lit sparks in a few dragon hearts.</p><p>“He wished me to tell you that he hasn’t found any korvi who’ll up and join this village, and he regrets that very much. But he’s told folk that a village lives on this mountain, for what a handful of seeds that’s worth.” His smile wrenching awkward, Syril tried, “I’ll be sure to visit whenever my wings carry me past here! Now that I’ve got a clear sight of where you folk are.”</p><p>Murmurs rumbled around them, the folk of Aloftway spreading news around. Syril held onto a shadow of a smile, resettling his restless wings.</p><p>“Well, now,” Rue said. She recalled her shard of responsibility, that jabbing sensation in her chest. “I think you should speak with our mage and tell her all of this.”</p><p>“Yes, yes, your mage,” Syril said. “I mean to bring her this pouchful of dried corn!” He gestured to one of the bulging pouches tied to his waistband.</p><p>“Didn’t you just offer to trade that corn?”</p><p>“Not at all! I have corn that’s mine.” He gestured to a different pouch with a different bulging shape. He grinned wide. “But even in that case, I’d be glad to call it yours if you offer me a trade for it! Not much point flapping to every corner of the land if I’m not looking to trade when I get there, you see, Rue.”</p><p>That seemed like a sensible enough way to live. Sensible, if laborious.</p><p>“Fair enough,” she said.“If you come with me, I’ll show you to the mage. She’ll offer you some trades as well, I’d imagine.”</p><p>“In all my eighty-five years,” Syril crowed as he took Rue’s side opposite Feor, “I’ve found there’s always a little time for trading! Make a mark of it and tell everyone that it’s true!”</p><p>The weight of Mother’s presence stayed with Rue, while she escorted the Reyardine to the mage home. He commented on her fine guard beast, and guessed correctly that such a creature needed a bounty of food. Once at Brenne and Mara’s home, Rue saw the fire-feathered visitor inside and received a grateful nod from Brenne, and that felt like the weight of her duty lifted away.</p><p>Returning, Rue didn’t entirely expect Mother to be at home — she would be tending the Middling circle plants, more likely. Burying her grief in the Middling circle’s honoured soil, what little there was since Middling offerings had turned sparse. But Mother’s familiar shape stood in the Tennel home, unmoving, with a furred friend curled dutiful in her lap.</p><p>And it was a heavy, grief-bound air to walk into. Mother sat gazing up through the smokehole at the sky’s light. Her hand laid on her left forearm — where under her tunic sleeve, her marriage twig was tied close against her skin. Rue had never seen its wood grain; she only knew its shape and the substantial fact that it was there.</p><p>Some form of dinner sat in a pot on the hearth coals. With a last mournful look at Mother, Denelend slipped out of her lap and went back to minding it, stretching tall to work his carved spoon. Ears low, he cast a worried glance to Rue. He could have said something — High Ones knew that Denelend didn’t have an unkind word in his head — but this quiet was Rue’s to break, plainly enough.</p><p>She went to the boiling pail. A warm cup of something would do well here. Minding her mother’s shape and even breath, she said, “Now … At least we know why he hasn’t come back?”</p><p>“Mmm,” Mother replied. She sounded distant, a voice humming through a valley’s depths.</p><p>“And he’s being looked after. We can thank the gods for that.”</p><p>As though the gods took responsibility for passing out luck. In Rue’s experience, they did no such thing.</p><p>“I should be the one caring for him,” Mother blurted. It was a statement that stole strength from her, making her shrink, curling around her own innards. “If he hadn’t needed to wander, this wouldn’t have happened. I should have—“</p><p>She couldn’t seem to speak her own lie: she only sat there, mouth trembling. Denelend abandoned the dinner pot and darted to her side, his ears limp. He plainly wished to curl close and he eyed her instead, like a touch would cause Elova Tennel to finally break.</p><p>“Mother,” Rue said. “Don’t tell yourself that. Some folk just … They need their freedom.”</p><p>“I know,” she murmured. “I know. We’re all a patchwork, and … And some of us just have a hunger for travelling.”</p><p>Rue had often thought that Father was like the Legend Creature Mandragora. He kindly smiled; he didn’t speak overmuch; he left whenever a travelling wind caught his leaves or tempted his whims.</p><p>“Oh,” Mother sighed. She gripped her sleeve tight. “I should have known there would be a day when I felt the real sting of it. I know he’s a wanderer. I knew from the beginning, at least a little, the way he … And he knew who he was exchanging twigs with, too.” A smile melted through her shifting expressions; her clenched hand released and searched out the twig-shaped lump again.</p><p>“If nobody wandered,” Denelend told her, “there wouldn’t be much news about anything.”</p><p>“No one to tell the news, either,” Rue said. “And remember: Lavender and Avens are safe. Our farther-flung kin, too.”</p><p>Safe because they had stayed put, with their roots in proven soil. Planted in the bustling communities the Tennels had lived for generations and never worried about where the town’s edges were, where danger began. Rue felt her two sisters far distant, their memories gone dry now. Avens was surely not the infant Rue had known, tottering a circle around Lavender on stick-thin legs. Rue supposed this was how families splintered apart, to run houses in various corners of the land; their goals simply blew them in opposite directions, they the tufted seeds.</p><p>“Yes,” Mother decided here by the hearth. “I should be thanking the good, not regretting the bad.” She gave a wan smile and put a hand on Denelend’s head, smoothing one ear flatter, calming his fidgeting. Feor drifted toward her — sniffing, maybe detecting her pain — and Mother removed her hand from her wedding twig to pat him, too. “I … think I’ll be in the Middling circle today. Rue, are you going to see the good Velgarro?”</p><p>“Yes, I am.” He needed to be paid.</p><p>“Tell him I said hello and good day, if you would? And be safe, dear.”</p><p>She would try, Rue told herself, her feet carrying her through forest with Feor by her side. She would keep her wits about her and try. She had more of Father’s blood in her veins than she had ever known before, if she walked this sure into danger’s teeth. She had a fuel in her heart — or perhaps her mind — that she needed to share with Aloftway village. Because Syril had chattered about sharing the news of Aloftway’s presence, as though Father had made no real progress at all.</p><p>Perhaps, Rue thought, Felixi would have some sharp-edged advice on the matter.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0015"><h2>15. Chapter 15</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was slightly before the golden hour Rue always met Felixi in, but she brought Feor to the daisy field anyway and she picked an ironwood tree to climb. Standing about in this field for long moments had long since failed to be harmless, and the hallowed trees might be as useful to her as to a ferrin. Regardless of Rue’s shoed feet being clumsier than a ferrin ever would be.</p><p>How would she protect Feor if a wolf happened by, Rue wondered? She couldn’t manage an answer. Feor sat below her, bound by his <span class="u">stay</span> command, smiling his dog smile. Beside him was the trade box — a lidded box made of river rushes old enough to creak when touched. It was a gift to the hunter feeding Aloftway’s dogs, a possession hopefully useful enough to accept in trade.</p><p>Pushing her airsense as always, Rue sensed a strangeness in the grass: a bare patch of earth at one side of this field. The trees near it were chewed at their bases, pale as the daylight. It looked like the bare place there had once been coneflowers, the trunks Rue had already found worn down to inner bark as though abraded with a stone.</p><p>Her wary airsense outlining nothing but plants and creeping bugs, Rue slipped down from the tree. She went to that bare patch and found the same story as before. Stems chewed even with the ground. Not a mote of plantcasting used on them. This was the last trouble Surgings Mountain needed, some creature unheedful of what it ate.</p><p>Rue wasn’t sure she would believe it if she weren’t prodding the soil with her own fingers. But the soil felt ordinary, and a quick blending of tinctor dye showed her the same mild pink hue as was normal for this grass field.</p><p>Gasterslugs, Brenne had supposed. That was a trouble Rue had never encountered herself: she only recalled a time back in Ordiny town that folk talked about gasterslugs, and asked korvi neighbours for their firecasting favours, and obtained salt and calendula. Talk of slugs died away after that. Of course it had when there were only fields and gardens to protect — not an entire wild forest.</p><p>And then the flapping of wings took over Rue’s senses: Felixi came over the treetops, flying low and clutching a burden. She turned to him, but stayed where she crouched.</p><p>“Searching for worms, are you?” Felixi asked her, setting a cloth-wrapped deer down and folding his wings. Feor approached with his tail low and wagging.</p><p>“Feor, <span class="u">stay.</span> Come here if you would?”</p><p>“Myself,” Felixi said dry, “or the dog?”</p><p>Fiddling with word choices again. Rue smirked; it wasn't her least favourite game. “The dog isn’t much for discussing matters, so I mean you.”</p><p>After a considering silence, Felixi approached. A broad korvishape that towered over Rue, muscle-hard arms folded, a looming sort of guardian while she bent over dirt. She was fairly sure Felixi would defend her in a tense enough moment. He blew flight smoke as he reached Rue’s side but that might have been a simple coincidence.</p><p>“What do you make of this?”</p><p>“Gasterslugs.”</p><p>She blinked. “You’re sure …?”</p><p>“More sure than I’d like to be.” He walked with slow intent, eyeing the earth at his feet. “Damn things have a breeding season with no rhyme to it, they’ll explode out of nowhere and eat every scrap if no one’s paying mind. Fine way to lose a harvest. What you do is look for an unlike patch of earth. That’s where they use their watercasting to displace enough— Here, like this.”</p><p>He dropped to one knee, scratching deep into the soil — and something wriggled under the crumbling earth. Something black-speckled and — as air rushed in against it — moist. Felixi unsheathed his knife and sank it in; the movement gradually stopped.</p><p>And Felixi turned an eye to Rue — wary, wondering what he might find. “Even your kind can manage it. They don’t bite or any such thing.”</p><p>It was a necessary brutality, Rue told her shock-humming innards. Surely it was necessary. Folk spoke of gasterslugs while worrying if their food plants would live to see the end of the season.</p><p>“Don’t folk use firecasting on slugs …? That’s what I’ve heard.”</p><p>“I hardly see the need.”</p><p>“Hmm.” Rue had received a tight-knit lesson, a fearless gift. “Thank you. I’ll remember it.”</p><p>Wiping and sheathing his knife on a cloth scrap, Felixi replied, “Well, now you can do your fair share for this region. Keep some plant cover on it.”</p><p>More stewarding Rue could do in the forest: actually, that was the last gift she needed. “Gasterslugs, they aren’t … aware, are they?”</p><p>Blinking — maybe considering it for a first time — Felixi then shook his head. “Hah, no. They’re mindless. Don’t care a whit for any creature, not even each other.”</p><p>Then there was hope for Aloftway to manage a gasterslug outbreak, without asking Judellie or Giosso to do the entirety of it. One problem was solved. Rising, Rue pressed her mouth into some cousin of a smile. “Now, then. I ought to give you a half-bushel of food after all your help today. Do you like bean spread?”</p><p>Felixi’s face twisted wary; he followed Rue toward the rush basket. “I can’t say I eat it often.”</p><p>“Try this kind, if you would? It keeps plenty well if you store it out of the light.”</p><p>He lifted the box lid with one claw, peering at the contents. Rue had packed them with extra care and sprinkled onion greens on top — hoping that Felixi liked them a fraction as much as Judellie. While he considered, Rue called Feor, who scrambled to approach the ever-intriguing hunter.</p><p>“I suppose I’ll take it,” Felixi said mild. “This time.”</p><p>“We’d appreciate it. The salt is running out, among other things.”</p><p>Felixi shot a look at her. “You’re getting enough for yourselves to eat, aren’t you?”</p><p>For a fellow who didn’t like idle chatter, Felixi certainly didn’t notice his new habit of sociable questions. Rue appreciated it and wished she could say so.</p><p>“We’re managing … A few folk are charging brightcasting stones to ward off darkcasting things. And we've got the four dogs to share between everyone, depending on who needs protection.”</p><p>“Don’t lie.” Felixi nodded toward Feor, who was currently snuffling the hemmed edge of his pant leg. “You’re not sharing this beast.”</p><p>“Honestly, no. I’m out foraging enough that I need a guard of my own. Folk need their calming elixers, Mother needs her wholesome greens. There’s enough to put in stewpots each day but not enough to store for later.”</p><p>Felixi paused. Rue could see something wavering in him in moments like this, faint as the dancing visions a fire’s heat made. Ask him again to join Aloftway, her impulse said, and it was still too long a wager to take.</p><p>“Well, then,” Felixi said dry. “You at least aren’t starving yet.”</p><p>“I’m … just not sure what to do about it. It’s not an arrangement to build our futures on. Would you give me your counsel on this? Folk need to be talked into leaving their homes, and leaving their homes is the large difficulty everyone is focused on.”</p><p>“You’re waiting on deliveries from folk who never promised to run any,” Felixi said.</p><p>And after years of waiting, Aloftway was dazzled when a delivery actually came — a delivery that was just the Reyardine stopping by on a whim. Rue hummed agreement. “It’s the only plan Aloftway made for the long-term … Bring in korvi who want to live here, or just make it worth folk’s while to travel here.”</p><p>“And if this plan works, you’ll stem one of your twelve wounds? Open your eyes, Rue, that won’t fix it.”</p><p>Her eyes were plenty open, she thought with thorns. At least she was looking at all. “Then what would you do, Felixi?”</p><p>“Stop the wolves. They’re the ones attacking folk and sparking the fear.”</p><p>“You mean hunt them?” They were creatures, after all. Mortal creatures, not some formless demon menacing through stories. She let out a breath. “That’s … That’s not a choice when we’re a village mostly aemet.”</p><p>“How many?”</p><p>“One hundred— I don’t recall the exact number, it’s nearly one hundred and ten aemets now. Twenty-eight ferrin. And two korvi.”</p><p>Felixi blew smoke and it seeped through his teeth like an angry liquid. “You’re all blind fools for coming in the first place.”</p><p>“I’m inclined to agree. But I wasn’t old enough to have a true say in it.”</p><p>Felixi stared at her, considering.</p><p>“Folk still called me <span class="u">bug</span> at the time. I couldn't have—” She shook her head. “That’s not the point. We’re in a fix now and we need to make a way out of it. Actually <span class="u">make</span> a way, not just sit and worry and hope things will get better. You’re sure you wouldn’t join the village?”</p><p>He hackled all down his back, his long face unchanging. “The answer will always be no.”</p><p>Rue hadn’t expected anything different out of his mouth; actually hearing it was a sting to her heart anyway. “All right … We did have a merchant fellow drop in today. Syril of Reyardine, he’s funny like a drunken horse. Do you know him?”</p><p>Coughing something like a laugh, Felixi smirked. “Drunken horse … That’s the truest comment I’ve ever heard about the Reyardine. He’s a fool who won’t stop talking, but he’ll try whatever you tell him to, I’ve found.”</p><p>“You trade with him?” Rue had imagined that Felixi traded with other korvi, for the never-ending flow of objects that filled peoplekind lives.</p><p>“Sometimes.”</p><p>A pause spread sticky between them. With a heaved breath, Felixi spoke:</p><p>“It’s basic sense we’re working with, Rue. Everything needs food to stoke its fire with. We’re just stupider than forest creatures, sometimes. Thinking so much that we ignore what needs to be done.”</p><p><span class="u">We</span>, Felixi said. Every child of peoplekind, he might have meant. Or just the denizens of this mountain. Briefly, Rue entertained the thought that Felixi meant just the two of them, standing here talking while solutions grew somewhere in the entire green land.</p><p>“That’s plenty true, but I don’t know how to fix a trouble that doesn’t have roots and earth involved.”</p><p>“Banish that stupidity — you said you don’t have enough korvi wings to deal with this. And that your own kind are afraid of the mere truth, so they’re not cut out to face this. Simple subtraction, Rue.”</p><p>No korvi, and no aemets. That left only one personkind. “Ferrin? What about them?”</p><p>“You’ve never considered your small friends, hmm?” He huffed, a smoke-touched gust in the meadow air. “Don’t trade them short. Ferrin are— They’re capable of larger tasks than they get noticed for.”</p><p>They were, indeed. Rue thought of Denelend, his back bowed as he dragged a rock twice his size out of the Middling circle. Here was more enormity: why hadn’t anyone considered what swift-footed weaselkind could do? Really considered them like holding a crystal to the light? Rue nodded. She would do most of the considering, she knew with a surety like sand in her mouth.</p><p>Felixi shifted his grip on the rush box, and shuffled his wing quills. Getting tired of this conversation, surely, the haziness of it. Rue wasn’t sure she blamed him.</p><p>“How is your mother,” he asked.</p><p>“Mother is managing. I think the strain of all this is burdening her recovery, she hasn’t gained any real strength back since she came … But she minds the Middling circle. It bolsters everyone’s spirits, and she gets regular use of her casting.”</p><p>“Sounds good for her.” Felixi watched the sky, his narrow pupils tracking clouds on the wind.</p><p>“I thought so, too.”</p><p>Rue put a hand to Feor, stroking his maned neck so his tail wagging sped up. All three of them breathing air and Felixi watching it.</p><p>“Mother sends you a hello and good day,” Rue said. “You know, if you’re going to ask about Mother, you should meet her.”</p><p>Felixi laughed, a hard caw lancing out into the clearing’s air. “That’s my payment for being conversational, hmm? I’ll know better for next time.” He turned, taking steps away before opening his ready wings. “This time in an eightday, Rue.”</p><p>“Until then,” she said.</p><p>Felixi actually was a friend, Rue was glad enough to decide. He was pleasant enough company in the smoke-fragile moments where he spoke genuine; his voice had the same wry fangs Rue heard in her own thoughts and, in this moment of frankness with herself, she wanted to hear it more.</p><p>“Suppose I’ll make use of his advice,” Rue sighed as she walked homeward — and Feor turned an open-mouthed glance to her. “Consider ferrin. I suppose if they—“</p><p>And then Rue’s innards solidified. The forest shifted constant around her, a field of flat leaves and thin sticks in jostling motion. And, drawing closer, a motion approached. Growling rose in Feor’s throat while Rue discerned the movement: two shapes too small to be dangerous.</p><p>“Stop that,” she hissed through her teeth and Feor fell instantly quiet.</p><p>The small shapes had long tails and they bounced from branch to branch, stirring chaos in the air behind them. One long tail broke the air uneven. It was the wild ferrin from before, Rue thought with a spike of hope.</p><p>They passed by, their bounding leaps a motion-glimpse through the leaves. Then, one ferrin stopped. They pointed their wedge-shaped head toward Rue; air moved near their nose. And with a chirping cry, the unfamiliar ferrin bounded closer; their friend following less eager.</p><p>Another new ferrin face split maple leaves. Green-eyed like before but this person was white-furred, brilliant against the leaves and her ears lifted the instant she laid eyes on Rue. Then lowered unsure as she eyed Feor. Then lifted again as she bounced down to a lower tree branch, nearly close enough for Rue to lift a hand and touch her. The ferrin opened her mouth and a bizarre sound came out, a bark more like a squirrel’s voice than any town ferrin Rue had ever met.</p><p>“Hello,” Rue said again.</p><p>The ferrin canted her head, ears adjusting. “Hello,” she chirped. “Friend?”</p><p>This one knew commontongue, it seemed — and Rue had to admit, she had an efficient way to go about making allies. She smiled despite herself. “Yes, I’m a friend.” She held out a hand; if town ferrin preferred to scent someone new, wild ferrin would likely appreciate it even more.</p><p>This ferrin twisted her ears, shifting her weight on her tree-crook perch as Rue’s hand approached. She leaned out, whiskers cupping forward, and sniffed the air into a miniature gale in Rue’s palm. She settled back onto her haunches, eyes alight. Here was where a ferrin usually grasped the offered palm and shook it. For a sticking, tearing instant, Rue wondered whether to have this ferrin act out the custom, as well.</p><p>“Ah, well …” Customs were nothing more than old routines, in all truth. She took her hand back. “My name is Rue.”</p><p>“I am Chi. He,” and she pointed at her branch-shrouded companion, “is Dwo.”</p><p>This was plenty friendly enough, Rue supposed. She patted Feor’s back. “You can come closer. My dog is friendly.”</p><p>“Friendly?” Ear angles mismatched in confusion, Chi watched Feor, whose tail wagged barely enough to sense the motion. “He did …” Chi rumbled a sound, an imitation of something with larger teeth than she had.</p><p>“He— Oh, when he growled at you? He didn’t know what he was growling at.”</p><p>Chi kept staring, head tipped.</p><p>Maybe Rue hadn’t picked a good explanation. “He … is here to protect me,” she tried. “If he smells a creature who isn’t my friend, he growls. But if you’re a friend, it’s all right.”</p><p>“Friends,” Chi mused. She leaned off her branch, spreading her fingers on the tree’s trunk to find purchase — when Dwo barked, sharper and deeper than a greeting ever would be. With a pointed glance back at him, then a click of her teeth, Chi returned to descending the tree. A few downward hops and she landed on the forest floor; Rue took a handful of Feor’s rope collar to stop his eager jerk forward.</p><p>“Stay,” she told Feor. <span class="u">Behave</span>, she thought, as he vibrated with excitement to the end of every hair.</p><p>And with low, demure ears, Chi lolloped to him. She sat on her haunches and two noses sniffed together, a windstorm fenced in by whiskers.</p><p>“His name is Feor,” Rue added.</p><p>“Ah? Dog has a name?” Chi turned to her treetop friend again, gesturing with her ears and the shape of her grey-tipped tail.</p><p>They were discussing, Rue supposed. In yet another language aemets never could. It would be easier for Chi, surely, if Feor would stop looming over her and snuffling at her fur — Rue tugged his collar and barely moved his muscular weight.</p><p>Gaze fixed on Chi, Dwo came closer, shimmying down his tree to a lower branch and sitting there: it was a compromise. “Wolf,” he intoned.</p><p>“Not a wolf,” Chi replied. “Dog. He is friendly, see?” She chittered a laugh and pushed Feor’s muzzle away, out of her ear. “Ah, Rue? You … are aemet?”</p><p>It was a question so obvious that Rue nearly couldn’t speak. “Yes,” she managed.</p><p>“You make medicine?”</p><p>“I don’t, no.” Unless steamed nettle greens counted. Or unless a person wanted to chew the raw herbs Rue found. She felt a furrow forming in her brow. “But there are people in my village who can.”</p><p>Chi’s ears pricked higher, her eyes shining. “We need medicine. Our friend is tired. We got food for him, but … He is not strong.”</p><p>Meeting a new tribe of friends Rue supposed she could handle, but she was a poor substitute for a healer. She lifted palms. “I can bring you to the Aloftway mage? She can help. I’m just a forager.”</p><p>Dwo flattened his ears. “Ah-loft-way. That place—”</p><p>And another silent conversation passed between him and Chi, this time with forceful flicks of ears and gestures sketched in the air. They seemed like a mated couple, Rue wondered. Or perhaps siblings who loved each other enough to fight.</p><p>Chi turned a regretful face to Rue. “I will come with you! We can bring things to trade.”</p><p>And Dwo was gone, suddenly, bounding away through the canopy. Not pleased at the thought of Aloftway, clearly, and the sentiment was a wedge in the forest air.</p><p>“That … would be fine,” Rue said. She turned back toward home. Chi lolloped along over crunching leaves, another furred ally in Rue’s wake.</p><p>Bringing back a ferrin ally — that was nearly what Aloftway needed. Right after Rue realized the need for ferrin allies, so it here was another blessing descended from nowhere. More fortunate chance, but this one needed to be found in the forest. Not unlike Felixi, in all truth.</p><p>Chi followed Rue home, lolloping at her side opposite Feor. And she had no shortage of curiosity. She asked questions in her cobbled words and Rue answered what she could: yes, Aloftway was a big place; about a hundred and thirty people lived there; <span class="u">a hundred</span> was ten groups of ten; yes, Aloftway had other ferrin.</p><p><span class="u">Who taught you to speak</span> weighed on Rue’s tongue. She held back her question. It seemed too blunt to forgive. Rue gathered logic to content herself: if Chi knew an aemet person when she saw one, maybe she had visited a town, or met an aemet wanderer.</p><p>The sight of the dead stranger stirred in Rue’s memory and she denied it. She thought about Father travelling and smiling kind at whoever he met. Or maybe, she ventured, Felixi had dropped down to meet this small friend and teach her words; Rue put that unlikely thought far aside.</p><p>She arrived at the mages’ home and found it full of movement. Brenne bustled inside, leafed branches wagging in her hands to match the wagging of her loose, short hair; Mara tended a pot nearly hot enough to simmer. A neighbour emerged with a tincture flask in hand and gave a broad smile to Chi as he passed. Rue had arrived at an excellent time — and she looked to her lolloping companion, recalling the disorientingly short time passed by since they had met. It felt like more than a few eightmoments. This must have been how Mother chose Denelend as part of their new family; this was how folk all over the land forged odd bonds.</p><p>“This is where our mage lives,” Rue told Chi. “Let’s see what medicine we can get for your friend.”</p><p>Her attention snapping back to Rue — from the streets and the people, and the dirt packed hard by shoes — Chi beamed thankful.</p><p>When Rue pushed the door curtain aside and introduced their new ferrin friend, the air thickened like the hour before a storm. And then the storm hit indeed — the downpour of friendly words from Brenne, the gentle stammers from Mara, the offering of drinks and food and Chi’s pivoting ears working to capture it all. Feor basked in the happy scene, tail wagging fit to fall off.</p><p>“We're happy you came, Chi,” Brenne said. She hurried a little corn porridge out of the cooking pot and into a bowl. “We need all the new friends we can get.”</p><p>“New friends are good,” Chi replied. She accepted the bowl, marvelled brief at the polished shape of its wood, and sniffed the contents. “We are a small family. We-the-eight.”</p><p>“Living out in the forest as you do,” Mara said, “you must be a brave family, indeed.”</p><p>“Chi is plenty brave,” Rue said, rubbing Feor’s ear. “She came to meet my wolf-beast.”</p><p>Her ears shifting upward like a wry smile, Chi licked careful at the steaming porridge. “Thank you for this food. And the medicine. We can trade you things.”</p><p>A look flashed between the elder women — gratitude and guilt stirred together.</p><p>“What do you have to trade, dear,” Brenne asked.</p><p>“Things we find in the forest. Animal bones, and plants and fruit. And muhroo … Muh—” Chi put down her bowl and gestured a shape in the air, a narrow stalk and bulging top.</p><p>“Mushroom?” Rue tried.</p><p>Chi squeaked pleased. “Mushroom! Anything we see when we’re in the trees.”</p><p>“Well, we’d be very happy if you found food for us.” Holding out a leather flask, Brenne knelt toward Chi. “Now, this is the elixer for your friend.”</p><p>“Elixer,” Chi murmured, hardly louder than breath. Practicing her commontongue, Rue was sure now.</p><p>“It’s made of nettles and coneflower, and a little managrass. And I put some spinach in this one, as well — it sounds like your friend could use the food value.”</p><p>Chi likely didn’t recognize all the words, but she put down her bowl again and took the flask in her small hands, ears low and humble.</p><p>“We will bring you things,” she insisted.</p><p>“When you can,” Brenne insisted back. “You can give them to Rue. Or just leave them near this house.”</p><p>“We will,” Chi said, her chest filling out with pride. “We ferrin can be your friends.”</p><p>That made more sense than anything else Rue had heard that day.</p><p>When she had finished her meal and licked the bowl clean, Chi took her leave, gripping the elixer flask and a cloth-tied handful of chestnuts that Mara had quietly pressed on her. She was a distinct motion heading away down the Aloftway street, then a vanishing presence like any other creature in the forest trees.</p><p>“She’s not a korvi,” Rue said, eyeing her fellow aemets, “but I think she and her family might be a help for us.”</p><p>“Oh, I’m sure.” Brenne said. “Don’t worry, dear, that good fellow Syril said he’ll round up some help for us.”</p><p>Brenne’s own words didn’t seem to soothe her, her mouth pressed, her shoulders drawn like flinching from the lies in her head.</p><p>“Round up help,” Rue said. Her own voice was a bitter tonic. “We’ll just … hope for another delivery of charity from our neighbours and call that a problem solved?”</p><p>“Dear,” Mara said. More words today than she had spoken in weeks but now the fear-stunned distance crept back into her eyes.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Rue blurted hard, more words she needed out of her. “But I just can’t understand why we’re not doing anything. Am I supposed to forage for us all, for this village’s entire life?”</p><p>The air weighed like molten metal, while Brenne stood wide-eyed between them and Rue had a ready blaze of words inside her.</p><p>“We haven’t shown much courage at all,” Rue went on. “Not compared to Senford — he walked these forests alone, Brenne.”</p><p>“That was in safer times.”</p><p>“Safer? There might have been a thousand wolves for all he knew.”</p><p>Brenne let out a gust of breath. “I … To be plain about it, I don’t know what else we should do. Aren’t we children of Verdana and sisters of green? We have our roots into soil, and even if we grow one small mote each year, like a cliff maple clinging to rocks—“ She smoothed her hair. How she could stand so many loose hairs needling her senses, Rue would never know.</p><p>“Look here,” Rue said. “Even if we ourselves can’t fix what’s turned out … Let’s stop waiting for korvi friends we haven’t even met. For a start, we’ve got ferrin among us. They’re quick and able. And we just found eight more ferrin in the forest!”</p><p>“Yes, I suppose.” Picking up Chi’s porridge bowl, Brenne seemed grateful for small motions to make while she thought. “I hadn’t wanted to give too heavy a burden to our small folk, but they do have a spark in them.”</p><p>“They’re plenty able to manage heavy tasks.” Rue waved a hand toward the village outside, to the remembered route she would walk toward the Tennel home. “Just look at Denelend. He brightcasts. He’s moved stones bigger than he is — and Mother is well guarded when he’s around. And if you’re worried ferrin can’t face a dangerous beast, let’s think on the way Chi and her family move about in the forest by themselves. No korvi, no dogs. They manage it plenty fine on their own.”</p><p>“I’d imagine they stay in the trees, though.” Brenne glanced to Mara.</p><p>Filling steadily with a drawn breath, Mara sat staring at the wall now. She said, simple as acorns, “Ferrin have their electricasting. I, ah. Imagine they can use it.”</p><p>The pause in that room was electric, itself. Brenne fussed again at her hair and nodded. The guilt of omission weighed here: Rue knew ferrin were great folk in small bundles, but she felt the phantom truth of that bare skin on Dwo’s tail, where something had surely tried to make a meal of him.</p><p>“All right,” Brenne decided. “I’ll ask our Aloftway ferrin what they’d be willing to try for us. Let me see, what could they— Forage more broadly, I’m sure, perhaps descend to the ground for short spells. And they might search out new folk, like Shika did with the good Velgarro. Oh, I do hope this ends well.”</p><p>Worry churned in Rue’s stomach as she left to find Judellie — that responsibility forgotten in all the shuffling. The dogs still needed their food, the deer lying in the daisy field at this very moment. And for all Rue knew, wolves were devouring the abandoned meal already.</p><p>When Rue told as much to Judellie, she smirked humourless as a bar of steel. She took off straight upward and circled above the trees, gathering momentum to lance straight toward the clearing. Terror dropped Rue’s jaw and she hurried the same direction, snapping command to Feor so he ran with her. But once they reached the clearing through a fading trace of smoke, Judellie stood alone over a lightly mauled food carcass. Bleeding more this time, from her arms and one wound cleaved ragged into her knee, but she was smiling.</p><p>“I chased them east, so you should be safe," Judellie said. “But I think we need to tell the truth this time.” She bent to hoist the deer onto her shoulder.</p><p>In the middle of this confused life, Rue had will to fuel her, and a dog she could command. But as she sensed wet rivulets on Judellie’s hide the entire way home, Rue again wished for fire. Some means of her own.</p><p>
  <a id="Chapter151" name="Chapter151"></a>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0016"><h2>16. Chapter 16</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>He hated to think it, but Rue was right. This mountain had plenty of worries spread over its surface, nested under its trees. There might not be foundation enough to build a future.</p><p>But more immediately, Felixi bothered to fly north, putting Surgings Mountain behind him long enough to snatch up a rabbit for dinner. While draining it clean, he felt he should have something fresh-grown with this meal. A little roughage to garnish his cooked meat. Onion greens. No, not something so difficult to search out wild, or so frustrating to forge a bargain for. Felixi had easygoing brambles for that, a patch that gave succulent berries and didn't echo of past towns. He returned to the mountainside and took a comfort-worn flight path into a deep-running crevice. His small, secret farm.</p><p>But the brambles were gone. All the thorn-clawed loops of vine were gone, the stem snipped off like someone had knife-harvested the entire plant and carried it off. Or chewed it. Yes, Felixi thought with calm poison, following bare earth with his eyes, finding the sheen of resettled soil. Something was eating more than its share of the plants in this corner of the land.</p><p>Raking dirt with his toeclaws, Felixi unearthed the biggest gasterslug in this entire cursed land. Nearly as long as his forearm, writhing its black-and-rainbow bulk like it knew what outrage was. It stood no chance against his hunting knife. He reburied the unmoving pieces, and tamped the soil on top of them. Food for plants, now. Maybe he ought to burn the pieces to ash, said a farmer’s thought — but Felixi did <span class="u">not</span> use his inner flame while in this mountain's forest, not if he had one crumb of sense left in his head. Not after he saw the forest fire one careless spark could bring. Above him, trees lined the crevice and they rattled like memory.</p><p>He shuffled a step over, to the bramble stub that used to be his. Just a clean-gnawed circle in the soil now, too devastated to grow a single morsel for him. But the roots seemed untouched under settled earth. With bitter flame in his chest, Felixi settled kneeling, his mantled wings hanging shadows over his work. Flame wouldn’t fix this. Firecasting couldn’t fix a living thing already broken. Instead Felixi lowered his mouth to the bramble stub, and set about finding his plantcasting.</p><p>It never had liked him much, this green, growing skill. Not even before, in his old life. It probably saw the withered shape of Felixi’s soul and knew he was the wrong kind, not a fear-gripped aemet or a wide-eyed nurl at all. So the plantcasting spark hunkered in his chest and refused to come out, and refused even while Felixi focused and concentrated. He circled around it like tight-yanked rope. He thought about helping, healing, and thought of his own fire simmering underneath this plantcasting so it had best start moving outward. Finally, element came to Felixi’s throat and he blew it outward, a tendril of green magic trickling off his tongue. It caught into the bramble stub and suddenly flowed easier, grateful to latch into a fellow plant and bolster it.</p><p>Difficult as the plantcasting was, Felixi couldn’t pay much mind to the growth of the bramble; it was a mere detail of movement outside his focus, outside the swelling and strengthening of this constructive magic. It slipped away from him then, escaping his fiery grasp and rustling away into the bramble’s mortal fiber. Felixi spat a breath full of smoke and let his casting energies go. His heart pounded like he had been flying in a gale; he had tightened fists at some point and left clawpoints' sting in his palms.</p><p>But the bramble stub was now a slightly longer stub with a furled beginning of a leaf on it. Good enough, Felixi thought, pushing himself to his feet and shaking out his stung hands. His plant would live if another slug didn’t come along to gobble it. With the way this mountain had been faring lately, he had best banish the thought of finding berries ever again.</p><p>With a sour mood in his mouth, Felixi picked up his rabbit meal and winged bitterly homeward — and he thought of the real farmers on this mountain, the aemet folk of Aloftway. They could help their fellow plants if they weren’t scared stiff by the wolves about. They could do a lot of things. Fill the air with chatter and lend themselves to the forest and maybe even hold out a hand to the folk who had called this mountain home for longer. It was a mixed thought, sweet and bitter all at once.</p><p>And thinking of the ferrin made him notice motion in the forest, every waggling tree branch that might mark a leaping little friend. While he circled, loosening a spare cargo pouch and slipping the rabbit in, Felixi was quite sure he saw a ferrin in the tree shade. Someone grey with black tips. It was Pel — with his back arched, electricity flashing between peaks in his fur.</p><p>Predator, Felixi knew with a stirring fire in his gut. Ferrin didn’t bristle and crackle for no reason. He tied the pouch hurried to his waistband, yanking the knot tight against its cargo ring, and he flapped against the gusting wind and dropped. His small friend hackled at shadows that couldn’t be mere tree shade.</p><p>His wing quills smacked boughs on the way down, a racket that turned ferrin faces toward him — two ferrin small beside him, not just one. And the wolf bristled, too, white teeth glinting at Felixi pouncing down on the sloping earth. It had the nerve to glare at a grown korvi man who held his wings open wide, who poured smoke between sharp teeth of his own.</p><p>“Felixi,” Pel said — a relief-weak voice.</p><p>The wolf stared at Felixi a moment longer. He flexed his feathers wider, as though there was any doubt he was bigger. And then the beast bolted downhill, into the shadows and into a blur of green leaves and dark air. In the time it took Felixi to doubt his eyes — that truest indication of darkcasting — the wolf was gone. The afterimage of the wolf’s back burned in his mind, the scar-bare skin he should have expected.</p><p>This troubled stew only thickened. He blew out his spark-flecked smoke heat in a hissing sigh — marking this place as his with the smell of fresh firecasting. And, after watching every spark wink out in the consuming air, Felixi turned to the ferrin. Pel bent over Dwo — bent over digging this time, while Dwo wriggled in the loose earth gripping him to his waist. The small friend grabbed for Felixi’s offered hand — a hand that enveloped the whole of his grit-covered arm.</p><p>Felixi pulled, and Dwo’s weight shifted and stuck. Here was the needful stare again, the blend of wide-eared alarm and wide eyes like precious stones, like the first time they had met — and may the Barghest take Felixi if he let his small fellow feel hurt any more.</p><p>As Pel dug, throwing sprays of dirt between his hind feet, the resistance faded. Dwo came free of the earth and dangled from Felixi’s hand. Set back on his feet, he immediately shook free of the clinging dirt.</p><p>“Thank you,” Pel said, shaking himself like a full-body nervous twitch. “We hunting food …” He mimed more digging. Then wriggled fingers — worms, likely, or some other crawling food creature. “And found wolfs. Hiding.”</p><p>“In the earth.” Dwo paused from rubbing his head fur clean; <span class="u">this is all truth</span>, said his eyes. “There was …” He gestured a round shape, as tall and wide as his weaselkind arms could scribe. “Under the … the earth.”</p><p>“A hole?” Felixi eyed the shambles of earth — and he could imagine where an underground space had been, where this crumbled soil had stood protruding from the mountainside. “This must have been the wolves’ den. They lived here … Not anymore.”</p><p>With a hurried wave of his hands, like his ideas needed air and freedom, Pel blurted, “Careful! We careful! I watch, Dwo dig.”</p><p>“Bad smell,” Dwo muttered. “Bad wolf smell.”</p><p>Their astute noses should have caught the scent of a wolf den: even Felixi noticed a tang of rot and urine in each breath now that he knew it was there. He raised a brow at Pel — who wilted, ears limp on his neck.</p><p>“Bad smell means—” and he made wiggling worm fingers again.</p><p>The sight turned Felixi’s gaze away and sent his hand clawing into his mane. Cleverness was a horse that kicked when it liked.</p><p>“Stupid way to find your dinner,” he said. “But you did well. Only two of you, against wolves? You were very brave.” These small folk made an idiotic decision and stood fierce by it. That wasn’t something Felixi could fault, not one bit. Pride burgeoned inside him: anyone who thought a ferrin couldn’t handle themselves could go bite a stone.</p><p>Pel smiled crooked, one ear lifting. “Hard to find plant food. We can eat a wolf.”</p><p>Dwo shot him a look filthy with disbelief. He was right — wolf meat tasted terrible.</p><p>“Whatever you eat, be careful with your electricasting.”</p><p>Gesturing frantic, Pel blurted, “I— I look! It safe!”</p><p>And as Felixi settled to his knees in the dirt, he couldn’t articulate any of it yet. Couldn’t even speak to save his coward life, this life he would spend flapping around in the mountains like a spit-poor attempt to hide. But he had no doubt that would change.</p><p>He dug again, this time raking until rubbery strands of earthworms caught on his claws and flintback beetles scuttled free of the chaos. Dwo and Pel snapped up the beetles and crunched them down; the earthworms were easier to carry, and they would make a meal for the others. Maybe Soh.</p><p>Who was doing better after he drank some elixer, Dwo said. Elixer definitely wasn’t a word Felixi had taught them: he couldn’t remember the last time he’d considered the stuff. Aemets, on the other hand, went through elixers and tinctures and tonics like they breathed air. So some of his little friends had been making friends with Aloftway and Felixi would bet a bushel of corn it was Chi — although he didn’t have corn to bet anymore. He was suddenly full of the ache of things changing.</p><p>No one on this mountain was going to eat well, Felixi knew in his bones. Not until the gasterslugs ran their course. Not until the wolves grew some sense and left for greener fields — and they might not bother, not with roads walling this region in more than ever and a village of aemets here that didn’t have the sense to leave, either.</p><p>Small wonder that people huddled together in villages, using one another for shelter. The land could be a frightening place when the daylight died and the hunters came out — but that was a thing to be ignored while living in flimsy walls and drinking lovely, warm cups of tea.</p><p>Felixi followed Dwo and Pel back to their nest, flapping low over the trees, catching glimpses of their leaping grey forms. Escorting them, he supposed, but his mind had long since flown away.</p><p>This wind-beaten mountain had been stable before its forest caught fire. It hadn’t been perfectly balanced — because nothing in the land was. But the forest fire made living things lose their footing, more tumbling into fear each day, snatching at what they could. A single spark in the grass and now everyone feared for their lives. One reasonable spark and the ferrin had paid so dearly for it.</p><p>Felixi saw splashing motions again, that infernal scene stained into his mind. Ferrin splashing stream water over each other — gem-bright droplets in the air, fright-wide eyes. Dwo easing his blistered mess of a tail into the stream water, then watching the Chi and Aka chew purple avens and salve Soh with them: they hadn’t found enough leaves to spare for anyone’s trifling tail wounds.</p><p>To this day, Felixi wondered how long he had stood there, inert. It must have been only a few clicks, a handful of heartbeats; busy though the ferrin were, they had keener senses than to ignore a stranger korvi in their forest. But in the smeared memory, Felixi stood like a lump on a log for long hours. The flight to Widely took days longer than that. And he should have held out for a larger healing stone — damn merchants and damn his own impatience.</p><p>If Felixi truly regretted his uselessness that day, he could have spent his months better afterward. Running town errands for payment, until he had enough trade things to purchase comfort for the ferrin. Or simply asking some town mage if the ferrin — they-the-eight, formerly they-the-eleven — could have a gift of healing and homestead. Felixi could have picked them up the moment he found them and flown them somewhere better — gods bite it, he had wings and not enough sense to use them.</p><p>His better sense throbbed, well aware that snatching up a little stranger ferrin with burned, blistered skin would have been a grievous mistake. They had trouble enough understanding his long name when he first spoke it — so explaining himself would have been a heap of wasted words. And flying them anywhere would have scared them nearer to death. Likely, Felixi thought as dry as burs, he would have received an electricasting shock for his trouble and he would have deserved it.</p><p>But the ferrin knew him now and welcomed him to their forest home. Maybe what they needed was plantcasters. Someone who could have grown another armful of purple avens when they needed it. Someone who could call himself a farmer.</p><p>He returned to his hidden grotto in the cliffside, to clean and cook and eat his rabbit with motions he barely saw. What would Felixi of Velgarro do now? Something the land would appreciate from a vicious, hunting creature like himself. Fire cresting in him, rancour burning in his chest, Felixi leaped into the wind and flew over the foothills until he found a bare-chewed patch of forest, a space of trees missing leaves and bark. If he wanted to make anything right, he needed to mend what was here to be mended. Not simply stew in his own memory. Setting down on rocky soil, he blew a long column of smoke that blurred his vision. Exhaled the worst of his vigor. And then, he began scratching earth with his toeclaws. Felixi of Velgarro couldn’t grow anything worth picking and couldn’t face his mistakes, but he could at least hunt gasterslugs.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0017"><h2>17. Chapter 17</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was nothing serious, Judellie told folk when she came back bloodied. Only two wolves. Her scrapes looked worse than they were. She hardly put the deer down before fret-faced aemet friends took her by the hand and tugged bodily toward the mage home. The Barmonds watched her go before picking up the deer between their many hands.</p><p>The next day, rising from her bed in the purple-tinted predawn, Rue recalled waking up a dozen times her airsense had snagged on Mother’s restless motion. It must have been difficult to see her middle child return from the forest with an injured guardian, with a supply of meat that kept a dangerous cycle in motion. When she woke, Mother would likely spend her day praying to the High Ones.</p><p>Murmuring <span class="u">here</span> to Feor, Rue left the home. She had been meaning to refresh her memory of Feor’s harshest command — and this was a fine time to take action.</p><p>She went to the broodery, the bramble-fenced space Aloftway had no reason to use. At least the walls would muffle her motions, and dampen the sound of her voice. She said Feor’s name and he thrummed with focus, looking to Rue’s guard ring and back to her face.</p><p>So she did what the breeder had done: she threw a tight-tied scrap of leather. “<span class="u">Attack</span>,” Rue said, biting the word out quiet.</p><p>Feor stared at her before the falling scrap caught his attention again, the motion triggering some gut knowledge. He darted and snatched the scrap off the ground before it fell fully still; he shook it, whipping side to side.</p><p>“Good,” she said. But she couldn’t mean the sentiment much. How could a makeshift toy approximate a wolf attack? Had Feor ever used his <span class="u">attack</span> command on another living creature, something that would retaliate with teeth and fury of its own? Blood knowledge was fine and well but it couldn’t replace real practice.</p><p>Now, in this moment, Rue could at least keep the command fresh in Feor’s mind. She should have done as much from the beginning. Walking slow to Feor’s side, she paid little mind to Feor’s hopeful-wagging tail; she picked up the scrap and threw it again, harder. “<span class="u">Attack.</span>”</p><p>Legend said there had been a pup born to the two gentlest wolves in the land, watched over by an aemet breeder. That pup was the first creature to bear the name <span class="u">dog</span>. It made a pledge to aemetkind: dogs wished only to be fed and groomed with kindness, the same heartfelt love that had shaped it into a new breed of creature. As long as that fount never ran dry, dogs would trade their lives for peoplekind safety. Always and without question.</p><p>It wasn’t a popular legend; Rue recalled a tension in the air the first and only time she heard it. No one liked the thought of a friend killed in a flash of aggression. Small wonder that Feor’s breeder had told the love-wrought tale of Juniper instead.</p><p>But dogs needed leaders, and what was Juniper if not a leader? She had loved her dog wholly but when she said she wanted one experience more, she had essentially given him a command. Perhaps if she had spoken her command sooner, she could have seen the desert’s empty shine without meeting her end there.</p><p><span class="u">Train them with a firm hand</span>, the dog breeder had said, <span class="u">and the both of you can walk anywhere without fear</span>.</p><p>So Rue had to make sure Feor knew how to respond to his commands. Feor might have helped Judellie in defending Aloftway’s meat. He might still help Judellie — because she wasn’t flinching at the thought of wolves, that was well and true.</p><p>Together as they were, Feor was like an inner flame for Rue to wield. She threw the scrap and pointed at it, a firm snap of a gesture. “<span class="u">Attack!</span>”</p><p>He rushed immediate; he grabbed with a snarl and Rue could only think praise for him.</p><p>Rue returned home to find Denelend grooming his fur, Mother sitting and stirring a stewpot full of breakfast. Their quiet was a different density than Rue’s tingling determination; she sensed two air fronts meeting uneasy. But she spread the meal blanket and checked the boiling pail, and waited for the day to truly begin.</p><p>“You didn’t seem to sleep well,” Rue asked Mother.</p><p>“Ah, I had a nightmare.” Accepting empty bowls from Denelend, Mother tried on a hopeful smile. “I think it's gone, though.”</p><p>Dreams brought great meaning, but nightmares were just demons too small to be more than a nuisance: that was Mother’s lopsided view if Rue had ever heard it. She accepted a bowl of root porridge and stirred in puckerapple chutney, a knotted brown string against the pale mash. “All right. Don’t work too hard today.”</p><p>“I won’t,” Mother said dutifully — like she wasn’t the mother in this home. “I think I’ll bring a cushion and keep off my feet while I work. But if I can grow the vines enough, I think we’ll have brambleberries tonight.”</p><p>“Oh?”</p><p>“I’m helping the circle grow, dear.” Mother looked proud as anything, aglow with the thought of Verdana. “I found a vine from the broodery creeping toward the Middling circle and I thought, well, why not have some of our thorny sisters protecting the circle, too? We could use an extra mote of protection. Denelend’s brought some Middling soil and bone ash to give them good root. We’ll have bramble blossoms to thank Verdana for.”</p><p>“And more berries,” Denelend added.</p><p>More fruit and a thicket wolves wouldn’t want to slink through — that was a plan Rue couldn’t fault. She warmed inside. Mother had more strength than she got credit for, willow strength that bent far before it broke.</p><p>“I was talking with Brenne about opening up a path to the broodery, maybe combining it with the Middling circle?” Mother motioned with her hands, scooping air together. “So we can have more space for the circle and anything it grows. We can always give the space back—“ and Mother paused, “<span class="u">when</span> Aloftway starts having new children.”</p><p>It was an ordinary aemet thought that stood out mismatched. Mother looked away, into her food.</p><p>“That … sounds like a fine idea,” Rue said. That future would expect her to have children herself, she supposed — or, rather, Mother would expect it. Rue's insides blanched at the mountainous thought. She supposed she would face it later.</p><p>Quiet hung. Feor breathed calm; Denelend stirred his porridge, his ears drifting uncertain.</p><p>After her meal, Mother gathered her shawl and walking stick, her mind plainly among the Middling green already.</p><p>“I’ll catch up,” Denelend told her — putting on a light-eared smile for her and lifting his dripping porridge spoon. “I’m almost finished.”</p><p>“That’s fine, dear. I’ll take my time walking.” Wet need suddenly filled her eyes. “Rue? Look after yourself. Please.”</p><p>“I will.”</p><p>After a rub of Feor’s ears, Mother left. Slowly, looking weightless as an onion skin but taking sure steps.</p><p>As she blended into the drifting street air, Denelend twitched his whiskers. Ears falling, he looked to Rue. “To be true as earth? I’m worried about her. Just a little bit.”</p><p>What a friend he was. Perhaps even Elova’s child, born to furkind but an aemet's son just the same.</p><p>“I’m worried, too,” Rue ventured. “Why? Is she straining herself?”</p><p>“I don’t think so.” Denelend shifted on his haunches, like trying to adjust the lay of his own skin. “I’m making sure she takes some tonic at least once every day. And I’m moving soil around a bit slower than I could …”</p><p>So that Mother could only spread plant roots that fast. It was a subtle, efficient plan; Rue couldn’t help but admire the wit of it.</p><p>Denelend beamed. “I thought it was a good idea, too.”</p><p>The fact of their two kinds hung between them. Rue stirred her breakfast in more circles. “You were never wild, were you?”</p><p>He turned a stare to her. “Wild? No. I’m from Wistful town. So were my parents. Um, but we knew somebody who was wild when she was small …” He discovered a thornroot lump at the bottom of his porridge and pushed it fore and back. “Why?”</p><p>Rue knew passing acquaintance ferrin, too, who had scars on their backs or an odd gait to their speech. She had simply hoped to speak to one with strong commontongue. “Since I met that wild family in the forest, I only wanted to ask about how to speak to them. Speak in … motions.”</p><p>“Oh, it’s not hard,” Denelend said. “As long as you let what you’re thinking show, you know?” He put down his bowl to gesture wide; Feor stared at the abandoned food. “Because it’s easy to learn what somebody’s saying when they’re, um, showing it to you. Instead of just saying it, you see? But you’re probably doing fine at it, Rue. Aemet people don’t usually hide what they’re thinking. Same with korvi people, too. Everyone talks, really.”</p><p>Showing what she was thinking — like Rue had done just a moment ago, when she had silently admired Denelend’s plan and he had brightened in answer. Rue naturally didn’t pay attention to her less preferred senses. Perhaps it was like the way ferrin didn’t seem to notice the churning of air each time they moved their brush-tipped tails.</p><p>“Hmm. That’s good to know.” It was yet another skill to carry.</p><p>“Dogs are sort of the same as ferrinkind, actually. They show a lot with their ears and their tails. So Feor is probably talking to those wild folk, too.”</p><p>And there must have been hundreds of comments passed by without Rue’s notice, because she didn’t have eyes trained to see them. She was frustrated, suddenly, by an itchy awareness of her own oversights. She rose, picking up her finished bowl as well as Denelend’s. “I’ll just have to pay more attention, I suppose …”</p><p>“You should ask Judellie! Maybe she’d know how to look for things — that’s a korvi’s best point, isn’t it? Good eyes?” Denelend wilted suddenly. “Oh, she’s supposed to be here this morning. Elova said she could have some of the …”</p><p>Rue didn’t hear the rest of Denelend’s words — because air clenched her into an aware fist, a sensation of the air patterns out of Denelend’s mouth and beyond that, beyond the board walls, a rushing of many frantic people. The objects Rue held fell from her hands.</p><p>“There’s—“ she blurted, and couldn’t manage more than. Something was spurring Aloftway to panic. “Come on,” she said while she ran, and she added a hasty command for Feor to follow.</p><p>Neighbours ran in the street — aemets running tall away from the commotion, ferrin dodging them while running toward on four feet. Rue followed the ferrin's example, dog and Denelend at her flanks, and she came to a stunned-still circle of aemet fellows: she knew Judellie's shape before the scene came clear into sight.</p><p>Because Judellie's feather braids stood in a crest along her concern-bent neck, and her wings framed someone smaller as if to protect them. She held Leneri the farmhand, who trembled like she wanted to run and never stop.</p><p>"What's this?" Brenne already ran to them, and the worry-lingering throngs parted for her to pass.</p><p>"Wolves," Judellie spat.</p><p>“Two,” Leneri added, her voice small as sprout leaves. She gripped her own arm, blood welling blue-dark between her fingers. “I— I think it was two.”</p><p>"I saw three. Only two of them took a dose of my fire.”</p><p>With Brenne's back turned, her speech was too muttered to discern. She took Leneri's hand in hers, testing the wound with gentle fingers, making motions under the shifting veil of tree shade. She turned her head sharp. “Denelend, come here, if you would. I’ll need light.”</p><p>He darted from Rue’s side to Brenne’s, flickering with electricasting and then lighting up bright. Leneri looked drawn, a fear-sapped version of herself. Judellie towered over her, squinting, her pupils razor lines against the light. A pulse of darkcasting shone between Brenne’s hands, the purple strength she had been working to hone lately; Rue sensed a flinch from brightcasting Denelend.</p><p><span class="u">To slow this bleeding</span>, Brenne said in low, sure words. <span class="u">I’ll finish in a moment.</span> And then louder so the village would hear her, “Good Judellie, the beasts been chased off — is that right?”</p><p>“Yes, but I cannot say where they went.” Her accent held every word crisp.</p><p>“In this bright morning, what could they— Everyone!” Brenne fixed them with a fear-strong look. “Back to your homes. Put coal on your fires. Or— Or green stems. Anything that gives off smoke.”</p><p>Aemetkind hurried away, finally giving their instincts more rein. Rue sidled around a turning, milling group of aemetkind; she needed to hear more, enough to know what happened. Rampant imagination was more terrifying than thousands of wolves.</p><p>"Come on," Brenne murmured. She offered a sturdy arm that Leneri took, nodded to Denelend, and began to lead. “Did they strike you anywhere else, dear?"</p><p>Leneri examined her other limbs. Bright and shadow danced across her in time with Denelend's lolloping stride. “I don't think so. One tried to bite my leg but it only got my boot leather.”</p><p>With a sudden, wide-shouldered rush, Judellie was at Rue's side — and she lowered her long face to Rue’s ear. “Leneri was at the creek.”</p><p>"Wolves drink, too," Rue muttered. “She shouldn't have wandered far enough to—"</p><p>“No,” said Judellie’s hot breath, “she was at the clearing! Standing in the light!"</p><p>“She was—" The worn-bare patch of clay by the river's edge, where folk had fetched their water for years. The most-walked path around. Wolves had circled an aemet there. Turned fangs on her and ignored the brightcasting on their opposite-element backs. Rue’s veins filled with cool air; Feor licked wet at her hand.</p><p>"That was where I heard her voice from. It took me just a few clicks to get there, but that was nearly all it took.”</p><p>"That close to the village,” Rue's own voice was strange — more frightened than it ought to be, less fury-hot.</p><p>“They’re bolder every day.” Letting out a smoke-cloudy hiss and turning the brunt of it away from Rue, Judellie said, “You should go make sure that your mother is all right.”</p><p>Make sure everyone was all right, so there would be enough friends to cower in groups with. Make sure Mother hadn’t bolted toward Verdana’s trees. Rue wanted that togetherness — she was dragged bodily toward the thought, pulled by her beating organs.</p><p>Judellie was gone, then, headed away with her eyes hard set on the distant forest. Rue wanted to call after her, tell her to stay safe and well, but what advice did an aemet have to give to a fighting korvi? Unlike her neighbours, Judellie stood ready and strong. Rue sensed feathers and tailtip blending with leaves, and she was hard inside. Maybe she ought to have been born otherkind. But she couldn’t change that; she could only lead Feor toward the Middling circle, to do what she could.</p><p>Mother sat on a cushion in the Middling circle, her hands loose-wrapped around bramble vines. Rue did have to admit that the thorned vines looked like a comfort.</p><p>“Rue?” she asked. “I sensed some commotion, dear — what was it?”</p><p>On a hitched breath, Rue explained. She pulled off her guard ring and pressed it into Mother’s hands: if anyone needed a guard creature today, it was a frail woman whose running might not be enough. With only half a heartbeat of hesitation, Feor positioned himself at Mother’s side.</p><p>“There’ll be smoke from everyone’s hearths soon,” Rue said. “And Denelend. He’ll— I’m not sure what’s keeping him, but he’s fine and well. Keep Feor with you until then.”</p><p>Nodding at that, Mother tightened her mouth and turned a grateful eye to Feor. Her hands wound back around a bramble vine. And her casting resumed, her ample amount of green hope.</p><p>Denelend left the mage home as Rue entered it, giving her a regretful smile and flick of ears. Past the door curtain, Brenne sat hunched, tapping a twig on the floor.</p><p>"Good morning, dear," Brenne said, her voice like a dragged bundle of limp flowers. She ran a palm between her antennae; the dirt floor in front of her was ragged with sketched lines. “Rue, if you'd think with me for a while, I'd appreciate it. Minds live in herds, and all.”</p><p>Rue nodded greeting to Mara — who didn’t seem to notice — and she approached Brenne's drawing. It was one winding column and a sprinkled assortment of squares. Like Aloftway as an airborne korvi might see it, if they could see past the living veil of treetops.</p><p>"I think we'll need to make a sure plan of this.” Brenne drew circles, surrounding Aloftway like the rings on a pond's disturbed surface. “Wolves are showing up closer and closer to us. And they're plainly hunting us, if Leneri is any show of it.”</p><p>"How is she?"</p><p>"Leneri? She'll have a scar on that arm. But the dear woman was lucky, it's good that we have what luck we do.”</p><p>“Pardon me,” Rue said. She picked up a bundle of knifegrass, two knucklewidths of it laid forgotten by the hearth stones. “This supposed to be your smudge?”</p><p>Glancing to the flames and seeing little, Brenne hummed. “Ah, yes. Put it on, if you would, dear.”</p><p>Tossing it into the low-dancing flames, Rue spoke a thanks to Verdana that she couldn’t hear over the crackling.</p><p>“But the point of my thorn,” Brenne said, “is that the wolves keep showing up closer and closer. It's like the wretched things don't have any shame. Or any fear of peoplekind.” She twirled the twig between her fingers, staring at the roof. “Now, why would that be? I've never heard of anything like it.”</p><p>"Losing their fear …?” Rue hadn't thought of it from that angle — that typical wolves had a capacity for fear or shame, and these ones simply didn't. “Wolves would know to avoid groups of peoplekind like they know how to breathe, wouldn't they?”</p><p>"That's what I thought. Great Dark would create them with that much knowledge. And if she didn't... Well, why wouldn’t she? I just can't make any sense of it.”</p><p>In far-gone swaths of time, the gods arranged the land and granted casting alignments to each creature, and they decreed the natural order of things. Plenty of legends told chunks of that story. When she was small, Rue had wondered with spiking annoyance why there wasn’t one clear legend that spoke just truth.</p><p>There might not have been such a legend — and maybe gods never laid rules at all — but the land’s living creatures did live by a set of normal ways. Patterns to follow. Without such basic structure, life would be all storm and chaos.</p><p>Rue sighed. With the fireplace rod, she pushed the hearth wood closer together so it might last longer. “We won't get anywhere questioning the gods.”</p><p>“Of course,” Brenne hurried to say. “If we were simply not meant to be alive, we'd have met the Barghest already.”</p><p>As though the entire village had committed one great sin for the Legend hound to judge. Trekking onto this mountain, perhaps, and planting themselves where they couldn’t cling tight enough. Rue could believe that rash stupidity was a sin — but nothing in life grew out as simply as anyone guessed. She turned back to Brenne, wanting to speak jagged truth: Brenne sat hunched over the drawing, adding scratched lines to the houses. Roof thatch and garden leaves.</p><p>"It seems," came Mara's voice, wavering and soft, “that we don't know anything.”</p><p>Brenne turned wide eyes up at her — like she expected to see greatness. But Mara still watched her own hands peeling something shrivelled, maybe a nut.</p><p>"Mara? What do—“ Brenne bit that question off. Mara didn't answer questions anymore; asking her was like demanding an earthworm out its hole. “There’s a lot we don't know," Brenne said instead.</p><p>For a few clicks, Mara's age-spotted hands stilled around the nut, her eyes blank and sad. She looked back to her work. “I think, ah. We don’t get enough air here.”</p><p>“Yes,” Brenne said, straightening to attention. “That’s true, we’re blind and airless.” Waving an idea-charged hand, she asked Rue, “Well, here's a thought: no one living in Aloftway wanders enough to know the winds, pinned into our homes as we are. Our two korvi follow us too closely to fly much. You’re the best informed of all of us, Rue, but you can’t say why the wolves— What they’re truly like. Isn’t that right?”</p><p>She blinked. “No. I sense them moving on occasion, and find a few bones they leave behind. That’s all.”</p><p>Brenne spread eager hands. “Do you suppose the good Velgarro would tell us anything? About the wolves and their movements.”</p><p>“I could ask him.” This was a plan with action to shore it up; Rue felt a little eagerness, herself.</p><p>"If he's a decent hunter — and he clearly is, if he’s been catching large creatures without fail — then he’ll know how animals move and where their usual homes are. Maybe he's seen where the wolves den up around here, or how many of the dratted things there are. I can make better plans if I've got some news to work with.”</p><p>Finally, Aloftway was going to think about its own situation. Not simply flee from the idea, not just obey their fear. Rue knew what a short, wobbling step this was but it filled her up with relief, regardless.</p><p>“I’ll ask him when I see him today. But if he’s not interested in sharing what he knows?"</p><p>“It's simple things he notices while flying, anyway! Of course he’ll—” A frown jabbed onto Brenne's face. “He still haggles hard with you, dear?”</p><p>“Sometimes. He’s been more generous, of late, but I can’t say whether he’ll welcome a new bargain.”</p><p>Brenne tossed her drawing twig into the fire, with a hurried word of thanks to Verdana. She gazed into her sketch lines and made no move to erase them. “Offer the good Velgarro whatever he wants. You know that’s always what I'm willing to give him. If he'll help us, he can have the shoes off our feet.”</p><p>In the bitter-soaked pit of her gut, Rue wondered if it would come to that. If Syril of Reyardine’s gifts were gone already, if the stores and stockpiles were grown that thin that they would need to trade their shoes. If the Velgarro would even take them.</p><p>With her relief trickling away, with Aloftway homes seeming like just a piled mass of poor-quality trade goods, Rue thought of the daisy field. The Reyardine wasn't due there yet but if she waited there in the right shade of daylight and waved her arms clumsy, she might make better use of his favour.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0018"><h2>18. Chapter 18</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>With her thoughts impatiently running, Rue cut a generous handful of parsley stems from the Tennel home garden. A token amount of trade fodder was better than none at all. Tucking the leafy stems into her pocket, she left the village alone. And she broke her own, predictable pattern: she moved brisk and took unwalked paths toward the daisy field, lines existing only in her memory of the forest.</p><p>Once there, she squeezed her fists and took pause. It had been some months since she had stood in this place without her guard dog: it was odd enough to prickle on Rue’s skin. But she didn't need to worry that Feor couldn't climb a tree. Her heart drummed with her own secrecy.</p><p>She hurried up the low-branched ironwood tree, stretched her arm out and caught one branch of a taller maple. A branch likely too slender to hold her weight; Rue frowned, and stirred plantcasting in her clutching palm. The tree’s essence was massive but drowsy — a great inert weight that brightened at the touch of Rue’s samekind spirit. Wood crackled in the entirety of the tree, a hair’s width of growth.</p><p><span class="u">This way</span>, she felt, <span class="u">grow this way, please</span>.</p><p>The branch obliged her. Bark and leaf buds stretched in her grasp and provided the fraction more she needed. Leaping, grabbing for the now-strong base of her branch, Rue hung from a tall enough tree and fear cinched her grip tight. Her breath came hard now; her pulse thumped in her head. But she climbed on watery arms and legs as high as she could, over the murmuring treetops and into the sky's wind. Rue stood many times her own height above the ground and she had a broad view now — hopefully broad enough for Felixi to notice her.</p><p>She clung to that swaying treetop long enough to see the sky turn midday yellow. Her casting strength filled back in but her gripping hands grew numb. How ridiculous, Rue thought, that <span class="u">standing in a gloried treetop</span> was a phrase of awe and breath-held wonder. From where she stood, this treetop seemed unsafe and loud, the wind whistling its broad grip on her. It was why aemets didn't stand in trees more often.</p><p>A flying creature caught her eye. Someone furlongs away but yellow, nearly matched to the sky. Rue waved one arm and yes, Felixi took notice if his wheeling was any mark of it. He flew toward her, his speck growing huge until he was a wedge cutting air currents, and finally a present korvi man glaring knives at her while circling her tree.</p><p>“Looking for your lost good sense?” he called over the wind.</p><p>“I need to ask you something,” Rue cried. “Without waiting for days.”</p><p>He flew another full circuit and flapped hard to hang in the air. He squinted considering. And after one more effort-heavy beat of wings, he soared downward in a tight spiral, to land in their usual speaking space.</p><p>It was a victory and a delight — one that even the awkward, skidding climb downward couldn’t ruin for Rue. She finally dropped to the leafy soil, and gulped a breath, and hurried herself into the patchy open.</p><p>“I thought that would be the most effective way to catch your attention,” she said. “Pardon the foolishness of it.”</p><p>Felixi flensed her up and down with his eyes. “Where is your dog?”</p><p>“With my mother.” With a wet swallow, Rue caught the last of her breath. “We … Aloftway had a scare earlier today. Wolves menaced an aemet friend in an open clearing, right in the bright morning, they were chased off with fire. I didn’t want Mother left alone when she’s— Well, pardon my tongue. She’s not alone.” Denelend was not to be forgotten, not for a moment. “But I wanted her to keep the dog.”</p><p>Sitting on his tail, Felixi considered. Likely deciding whether he approved. His expression shifted as slight as melting wax. “Well, Rue,” he decided. “That’s all sound as a laid stone. What’s got you feeling flaky enough to climb trees, though?”</p><p>“Aloftway’s mage is in a frame of mind for puzzles,” she said. “She wondered to me where the wolves are moving, because we could lay plans if only we only knew more.”</p><p>Arching a brow, Felixi didn't comment.</p><p>“So … So we’d like more information on what we're facing. Where the wolves travel on this mountain, why they’re turning up closer and closer to Aloftway. It shouldn't take overmuch of your time if you're already on the wing.”</p><p>Rue could sense air rushing between his hackling feathers — perhaps this was the day he said no. But as a small moment passed, Felixi still watched Rue. “You’d like me to seek the wolves by air?”</p><p>“I would. We’ll trade for your time spent.” Digging into her pocket, Rue produced the parsley bundle — only slightly crushed. “Here. For your trouble. And I’ll bring a pouchful of whatever you’d like to eat, if I can find any.”</p><p>He only stared at Rue’s offering. “You’re that hungry for news?”</p><p>“The scare earlier … The aemet they attacked was at our regular spot by the creek. It’s a well-trod path, a few stone-throws from our homes! Why would wild creatures venture that close to a clearly peoplekind place? It doesn’t make sense.”</p><p>Moving smooth and wary, Felixi took the parsley. “That’s certainly not like the beasts.” With a flick of his tail, a tightening of his brow, he began untying a cargo pouch— and he turned a blade-mouthed look to Rue. “Something'll need to be done.”</p><p>For a hanging moment, Rue couldn't place what to say. She never thought she would miss Felixi's smirk but this meadow felt too sincere without it. He yanked his pouch tight, the bargain parsley bound to him now.</p><p>“Something will,” Rue said. “Likely exodus at this rate, after a long haul of wasted effort and heartache. Most of our folk are well enough to run. Not my mother, though.”</p><p>Wind touched past them. Felixi lifted a hand to rub between his brows; feather strands filtered between his fingers like straw through a rake. And Rue couldn’t keep her eyes from the flaws on him — the scars on his flexing skin, the corners of his eyes that she kept expecting to look older.</p><p>"They're just pouncing on folk who head out into the woods,” Felixi asked flat, his voice tuneless and weary. “Like they've got no sense in their heads.”</p><p>“I didn't see it happen, but it appears that way. All Leneri did was go to the stream for water. She'll have a scar for it and that's the best side of the outcome.”</p><p>“It’s what hunting beasts will do if their bellies are empty and a person can’t defend themselves. Look here, Rue: there won't be feasts here anytime soon. I’m finding more slugs all over this mountain. If you can’t find enough otherkind to mend your problems, then you need to stop being foolish. Tell your mage, whichever one she is. Work for your keep or just leave.”</p><p>“We’d love to support ourselves!” The partial truth stung Rue. She tried again, “We’d love to use our own strengths and have it be enough, that is. But we’re in this fix because a lot of people made a stupid choice and hoped for luck, and hurried in blind and airless. So we need more information about the wolves in this forest. If we do need to give up and run, at least we won’t rush blind again.”</p><p>Felixi craned his long neck backward, eyeing Rue. “You managed to bring yourself safe to this field today, blind without knowledge. Weren’t you scared?”</p><p>A little, if Rue was honest with herself. It had been years since she could pass among the unspeaking trees and see it as a mere walk, a simple trip for a handful of greens. Ordinary actions had warped under all this trouble and fret.</p><p>“I needed to come here,” Rue said, “that’s all. And I am in the presence of an able korvi, you might notice.”</p><p>Felixi snorted, half laughter and half indignity. “I’m your guard, now? Have both mages check your head.”</p><p>“Not to worry, good Velgarro.” Rue could barely stifle her grin; she felt wreathed with a small victory. “I wouldn’t obligate you like that. I'd run on my own legs. Or ask my otherkind friends back in the village. I think you’re right, actually: our aemets and ferrin have been underestimating their own strength and each other’s. ”</p><p>Strangeness passed over Felixi’s back, that lifting of feathers. “You’ve met the wild ones, I suppose?”</p><p>“Chi was the only one I really spoke with. I introduced her to the village.”</p><p>“That sounds—” Felixi paused like he had bitten his tongue. “She’s the one with a real grasp of commontongue, she's the best choice of her clan to bring.”</p><p>“You’ve met them, too?” Rue hoped brightly for an answer; she held her expression mild.</p><p>“Often enough.”</p><p>That was Felixi’s answer, hanging terse while he looked away at the trees.</p><p>“They’re quick as the wind, I think.” Rue pressed on. “If they’ve managed to keep themselves safe living on this mountain, they must have enough nimbleness to stay out of trouble. Strange that they’re here, isn’t it?”</p><p>“What makes you say that?”</p><p>“Only that Chi is … so warm toward folk. If her family is the same way, I'd expect they'd search out a town instead of staying in the deep forest. Follow her curiosity, have a warmer-lit life. I hadn’t sensed a hair of them until an eightday ago. What cranny have they been hiding in?”</p><p>“I can’t imagine why you’re asking,” Felixi muttered. “I don’t have an answer.”</p><p>“I only thought that …” Rue tried her nerve and found it still firm. “Well, <span class="u">you</span> chose to live out here, didn’t you?”</p><p>He turned away, the arches of his folded wings slapping air. Rue had pushed too hard, she dreaded as Felixi walked away — but then he stopped, his tailtip lashing even. There he stayed, a burning ember in the meadow breeze.</p><p>If Rue was going to push her favour, she should do it fully or not at all. “Well?” she called.</p><p>“I chose this place,” Felixi said, “in that I wasn’t chased here, and I wasn’t picked up and dropped.”</p><p>“I can’t imagine a creature big enough to do that,” Rue tried, smiling. She hoped it would pass for a joke.</p><p>Resettling his wings, sliding the long quilltips over and over each other, Felixi hummed. Heat swelled inside his throat and he blew a long, grey tuft of guardian smoke. He said, “Have you heard the tale of the korvi’s trinket?”</p><p>Rue ran a few legends through her mind’s grasp; she couldn’t find one that seemed right. “I don’t believe so.”</p><p>“Well.”</p><p>Felixi turned back to her, placing his braced tail under his weight, his gaze shooting away to one side. With gathering awe, Rue realized she was about to be storied. This tight-locked fellow was settling, drawing a breath to share an entire story with.</p><p>“I’m not surprised you haven’t heard it. It’s for Volcano korvi, mostly. Your kind don’t usually care for it.”</p><p>Rue couldn’t think of an aemet legend she liked much, in this moment. They were sentimental things full of chance and coincidence and the fickle winds. She tried, “Would you tell it to me?”</p><p>He took a hasty glance at Rue, and resumed his calm glaring at the wilds. And he began:</p><p>“Once, when the land was young, there was a korvi fledgeling. He took to the sky and he flew. Practiced flying, and went a little farther each day—” Felixi waved a hand like telling his own tale to hurry up. “So, this pup could fly now but he still didn’t have any idea what he wanted to do with his newfound self. He should pick a job, everyone told him. Just snatch up an errand and fly with it. He didn’t care much for that idea. So he bided his days.”</p><p>Felixi paused, eyes flicking, shuffling the story’s pieces behind his eyes.</p><p>“He didn’t care for any of the local jobs or typical trades... So he waited. That’s the point of it. He just sat on his tail while everyone else flew whole journeys, because he was waiting. Then one day, in fair wind, the fellow was sitting watching the sky and wondering where he’d find his way. And fire god Fyrian came up to him to say good day. Imagine that,” Felixi said with a drip in his voice, “the Great One himself. Fyrian told that korvi, ah, what fine timing that his hands and wings were free right now. Because Fyrian had an errand for him. And the fellow grinned and said that errand was just what he was looking for.”</p><p>The sensation of story’s end thudded in the air. Frown drawing tight over his face, Felixi shook his head.</p><p>“I don’t think I’ve told it right. The point was that he didn’t settle for any old bit of scrap that came his way. Waiting for that prime thing was a sort of … a way to make sure he found his right fate.”</p><p>“That sounds reasonable,” Rue said. “Except for the idea of waiting for a Great One to walk up to him and put his own life in his hands.”</p><p>A grin split Felixi’s face — sudden and real. “Exactly, hmm? But if you can get past the basics of the story, where this fellow fritters about and wastes his time … I’ve always thought it means that everyone has their right path. Something they should keep as their true priority, and not get distracted from.”</p><p>Rue hummed. Now this legend showed its grains of gold truth, and she had a strange sensation of debt, a suction in her chest. If not for the details of fire element and flight, Felixi might have been talking about her.</p><p>“Thank you for that,” she told him. “Would you like to hear a tale? A rare tale of aemet folk in deep forests, or somesuch?”</p><p>“Fah, we’re telling tales now? I haven’t got time to spend on that.”</p><p>Which was why he had just told Rue a tale, clearly.</p><p>“All right,” she said, with a smile glowing in her mouth. “Just get back to your own matters. I’ve bothered you enough.”</p><p>He huffed — and his breath was hot enough to notice, a warm stripe in the air. “Fine enough. I’ll see about the wolves’ movements, turn a close eye to their habits. This time in … hmm, an eightday is too long. Four days?”</p><p>She murmured her promise.</p><p>And Felixi spread his wings, a slower unfurling than any other day, two spreading crescents of feathers. He blew a fog of smoke, and beat his wings through it, and he left.</p><p>Which was curious, because he had no reason to vent firecasting heat before doing his flying. Felixi couldn’t claim he <span class="u">wasn’t</span> guarding Rue. There was a rhyme and a rhythm to everyone, Rue supposed while she sensed smoke smearing in the air.</p><p>The breeze flowed westward today and carried that smoke toward Aloftway, a thinning miasma of safety. Rue hurried with care and stayed within the cloud until it was fully gone. Felixi was guarding her — but, she realized sudden, the hunter Felixi hadn’t answered why he came to Surgings Mountain. Why he stayed in such a troubled place when he could fly anywhere at all. Rue had missed her chance to wring out that answer; she hoped hard for another.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0019"><h2>19. Chapter 19</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Of all the things Felixi remembered, he couldn't say why he still knew how to make chutney. He didn’t like chutney. It was chunks, bits, and sauce all sitting in a jumbled puddle. Too confused to be anything worthwhile.</p><p>But Felixi thought on the matter, and ate a little fresh parsley with his dinner, and thought some more. He couldn't recall any cooked parsley dish that wasn't a damnable chutney. So Felixi searched his two storage boxes and found wrinkled plums, and he pulled chunks of firewood off the log he kept by the door. It took him an hour but he stewed up a concoction that tasted vaguely like food.</p><p>Spooning the steam-spewing mix into a leather pouch, he wondered whether Velgarro House still made their chutneys in a day-long furor of boiling and jarring. Surely they did. They had no reason to change. No reason that Felixi could possibly hear about in the Surgings wind, anypace.</p><p>It took him long minutes on wing to find the ferrin, but they gathered in a glad little mob once he landed.</p><p>“Well, hello, Soh,” Felixi said. “You are well. I'm happy.”</p><p>Soh smiled, an air-thin expression while he swayed on his haunches. With a flick of his ears, he implied, <span class="u">That isn't completely true, but I'll indulge you.</span></p><p>“Elixer helped,” Chi added. She bounced closer, and peered up at Felixi. “We didn't find trade things yet.”</p><p>Maybe he was right to hope that these friends joined Aloftway village. Bumbling moles though they were, those aemets had some useful skills — including a better knack with plantcasting than Felixi would have if he lived a thousand years. Damn him for withholding fine gifts to they-the-eight, they the cheerfully determined.</p><p>“That’s fine," Felixi said. “Get trade things when you can.” He sat on his knees, reaching for his pouch; ferrin attention stuck to him, a static charge in his feathers. “This is a gift for you.”</p><p>Chi accepted the leather pouch, pried open the drawstring and tilted her head at the contents. She sniffed careful and her family clustered closer, chittering with curiosity.</p><p>“It's chutney," Felixi said. “Food you put on other food.”</p><p>“The smell …” she wondered. “I don't know what this is.”</p><p>“Parsley and plums together. It smells different because I cooked it for a long time.”</p><p>Aka looked up at him. “You used fire?”</p><p>“Well, yes. I'd have cooked it with cool water but that takes too long.”</p><p>Chi explained the joke — pantomiming flowing water, then impatient, flat-eared staring — until they-the-eight mostly lost interest. But Pel and Serri smiled. Not a bad return from a dreadful joke, Felixi supposed. The chutney pouch was more engaging anyway, changing hands and setting noses wiggling.</p><p>“We put it on any food?” Chi asked.</p><p>“Any food you want. Everyone has—” He paused, putting the thought into simpler words. Talking to the wild ferrin was a word game, a millstone to be assembled careful. “You eat chutney any way it makes you happy.”</p><p>Zra ladled a handful of chutney straight into his mouth: apparently, he was easy to make happy. The others trilled thoughtfully and thanked Felixi.</p><p>"Now, my friends. I need your help.” He knelt, perching on his folded knees in the crackling leaves. Then he waved a hand toward all of creation, the trees and mountain cliffs and the land around. “How is this place doing?"</p><p>The ferrin looked to one another with lost eyes, gesturing.</p><p>“Ah...” Chi faced him — straight-backed, ever the spokesperson. “How is this place...? What does that mean?"</p><p>“Is it well? The trees, the land. Everything.” Annoyed heat prickled his throat. If only he were a bard, a wordsmith, someone clever enough to spin this into sense. He tried, “If you can’t find enough food, the land might be sick.”</p><p>“The land—” Chi stopped, staring at the air the electric way she did when she began to understand. “The land?” She tapped the ground with a foot, then swept an arm toward everything. Her ears tilted a question.</p><p>“Both of them,” Felixi said. Before these folk, he hadn't wondered why a fistful of dirt shared the same word as the entirety of creation. It was a glaring mistake among all the perfectly simple commontongue words ever spoken.</p><p>Tail brush waving with contemplation, Chi thought. She then acted out a translation with quick, broad movements. <span class="u">Here</span> and <span class="u">beyond-here</span>. Plantshapes sculpted in the air, and hearts’ feelings drawn with nonsense shapes.</p><p>And her understanding spread through her family group, lighting like flame. “Land,” some of the ferrin repeated, touching the leaf-studded soil and then sweeping arms, “and land.” It was one more granule of knowledge Felixi managed to give them.</p><p>Chi decided, “The places we go now, they are sick. It looks that way.” She tilted an ear to catch all of Aka’s hummed disappointment. “There are no plants for making sick go away.”</p><p>At least commontongue could manage a word for that. “Herbs. Herbs are what you call all the plants that help sick people.”</p><p>"Herbs?" She mouthed it a second time, scratching the lip and tongue motions into her memory. “No herbs. All gone. Maybe everyone in the land is sick.”</p><p>Maybe every person in Aloftway had picked rue and mint and avens for their health troubles. Felixi couldn't help his breathed laugh, gusting out of him sharp as gale wind. More likely that they were eating every leaf and scrap they could find, settling onto food like stinkflies on a carcass. Felixi wondered for one glass-sharp instant whether Aloftway folk were actually sick — as well as hungry, as well as circled by hunting beasts. Those would be truly wretched lives to live. He thought of Rue and her mother, the mother who sounded plenty unsteady on her feet.</p><p>"Maybe people are eating all the herbs, for food," Felixi tried.</p><p>"Maybe," Chi said. “We went looking far.”</p><p>She pointed up the mountainside, westward. That did explain her happening across Rue.</p><p>“A little tree food there, up high. And we saw the herbs—” Chi went on. She mimed snapping a stem off at its base, “—But they are tall at the same time. Like... like they grew.”</p><p>Like something cut them off and then spent a little plantcasting energy to ensure that its food survived. A browsing deer or cliff horse — but there were precious few of those left, Felixi knew as sure as rain. More likely that aemet folk were combing the forest and taking every bite they could find.</p><p>"But there are still places to find food," Chi added, her eyes probing Felixi, her ears settling lower. “In trees, and in the ground. We dig.”</p><p>Zra hummed, wiping chutney from his whiskers. “Many—” and he put his two hands together, writhing.</p><p>A snake, Felixi wondered. No — a gasterslug.</p><p>“The black things with colour spots? They’re called gasterslugs.” He straightened, head canting. “Are they good to eat?”</p><p>Ears fell immediately.</p><p>“Only a little good,” Dwo said.</p><p>“Gaster-suhlugs are big.” Pel spoke hopeful but with his ears still slowly falling. “Many food.”</p><p>Soh nodded. “Bad food. But food.”</p><p>"I think," Felixi said, “the land is sick.” He patted the ground, gently, like he might disturb the miserable thing.</p><p>"Not safe on the ground," Chi agreed. She shook her head, her ears folding tense. “Wolves come looking now, calling to say <span class="u">we hunt</span>. We-the-eight stay in the trees so we can be safe.”</p><p>Any talk of the mountain’s health would surely circle back to the wolves, the hunting creatures reliant on the entire web of creation to support them. This was what Felixi hoped to hear, however much the wild ferrin's plight cut his heart. Forcing his face smooth beyond his gathering fear, Felixi said, “Do you see the wolves hunting? They eat animals?”</p><p>Serri began gesturing sudden, her body-speech cockeyed with her left eartip gone as it was; she described animals and the frequency of them. The others shifted minute. Dwo added motions, reluctant.</p><p>Gathering it all with her wise eyes, Chi decided, “Small animals. The wolves are hunting, but they find—” and she approximated size with her hands: a rabbit, a lizard, a cavebird or partridge. “Small food.”</p><p>The forest was picked very nearly clean, the food creatures not enough to fill a stewpot for a town person, never mind fill the belly of a wild hunting beast. But Felixi knew that. Why else did he wing furlongs away to fetch a food creature for Rue? Because he had to.</p><p>“When you see wolves,” he tried. “They are … here?”</p><p>“Here before,” Pel blurted. “Not since we digging in the wolf den.”</p><p>With a sidelong look at Pel — a flattening of ears and a <span class="u">you’re lucky I like you</span> twist to his mouth — Dwo squeaked agreement. “Gone now.” He pointed the same direction Chi had. Felixi wished it weren’t true but Dwo’s arm told the very same upward-and-westward story. “They come here.” He mimed shifting eyes, a creature slinking along and searching. “Then gone.”</p><p>The wolved had moved toward Aloftway. Back toward the most likely source of food they could see, a gathering of aemets who wandered into the forest sometimes and had no protection but to run. A hundred-odd aemets and precious few guards among them.</p><p>“Fah,” Felixi spat. “What a knot.”</p><p>Chi tipped her head curious.</p><p>“A— A knot like in a rope. Like a mess of— Forget it.” He stood, dragging his body that held plenty of fire heat and yet felt chill. “You-the-eight might be in danger if you go to Aloftway. The aemet place.”</p><p>Frowning, Chi’s ears flattened brief before she calmed herself. “Aloftway is <span class="u">good</span>. They gave me food, and elixer— Now Soh is better! They are a very big family.”</p><p>The others stared wondering at her, and turned their silent questions to Felixi. How could anyplace that shared food and aided others possibly be a nest of troubles? And how could Felixi tell these small fellows not to make new friends? What kind of demon would utter that?</p><p>“Rue said,” Chi went on, “Aloftway is a lot of aemets. It’s better if more korvi and more ferrin come, and everyone helping each other.”</p><p>The others squeaked, but their gazes caught on Felixi.</p><p>Chi saw it, too. “Is something wrong?"</p><p>Damnation, he was letting his thoughts show. Nothing could hide forever.</p><p>“I’m just worried,” he said. “It would make me upset if you-the-eight got hurt more. Well, fine. If you go to stay with the Aloftway people, be careful. Watch always. I’ll … I’ll fly closer. If you need me, I will come.” He waved both hands, a half-hearted example of how folk summoned him. “You know.”</p><p>Nodding, smiling kind, Chi said, “We will.” She hopped closer to pat his shin. “You be careful, too.”</p><p>Korvi were flesh creatures — just tough ones that cooked themselves from the inside. Ones that chose to fly toward scuffles and get their hides marked.</p><p><span class="u">Be careful</span>, Felixi spat inside his head while he flapped up out of the trees. Being careful would have kept so, so many things from happening on Surgings Mountain. A little care might have kept the forest healthy and kept people fed. Kept them alive, as well.</p><p>The very least Felixi could do was to be careful now, and use some of the good sense he liked to think he remembered. He knew more about the balance of creatures than most — and he could practically feel the imbalance of this region within his own gut, the great weight of hunting beasts whittling away everything that supported them. He circled for a few insensate moments, knowing only the wind buffeting his feathers.</p><p>Just leave, said that silvery dream voice in his mind. Don’t stay in a swamp of emotions. Build a home on the edge of the land — somewhere beyond roads and paths, where he couldn’t see a soul for a whole day’s flight. The edge of the land would have game and free air and all the solitude Felixi could ever want. The Great Barrier’s movement would intimidate other folk from living there, but Felixi had nothing to fear. Frankly, he wondered what was outside the Barrier. Maybe he would try peering out through the curtain of godstrength, just to see what the Cold looked like.</p><p>Leave and be alone, and be free: he had thought nearly the same thing about Surgings mountain, if his foolish self would care to recall. Build a home on a mountain spire; it would be a place he could hunt game and enjoy the wind’s power; no one would bother him there. He could soar like the wyverns and be just as wild. And that had turned out plenty well. It took years of scraping limestone from his grotto's walls — years of polishing a new home to perfection — and all he wanted now was to turn away from it.</p><p>Moving wasn’t so simple anymore. Felixi had dear friends to look after and if he flew away now, the pain in his heart might never heal. On top of that, he had Aloftway begging for meals — although he couldn’t manage to feel bitterly toward Rue. If more aemets were as reasonable as her, they wouldn’t lose so many of their small and fragile villages.</p><p>He spat a mouthful of smoke into the skywind, and banked toward the midsection of the mountain. He needed to keep watch. Of all the folk with hearts full of fear, Felixi was the only one able to see broadly.</p><p>Felixi soared over the site of the forest fire. The place all the trouble began, he knew with fangs of old sensation at his throat. This place did provide him a view of Aloftway’s surrounding area, though, plus a warm thermal to rest on. He wheeled; he eyed the ground below. It was grown over thinly with green — grass and flowering things, always the first to rush in. But the green was patchy now, weak where stems had been chewed down to the ground. If gasterslugs kept this pace, nothing would recover.</p><p>And within the fire-thinned trees, movement demanded his attention. Two black-sleek wolves loped in silence — only two, walking through a thin-leafed place. This was a gem of a chance. No, Felixi thought fierce, he couldn’t — but he drifted lower, the wind holding him aloft in near-silence. Why couldn’t he? Didn’t these wolves strike at peoplekind, which they were never meant to do? That was a sin. And according to Rue, these wolves seemed apt to repeat it.</p><p>He was no Barghest fit to judge, stained as his own conscience was. And if problems could be solved by a few beasts ceasing to live, then hunters had an obligation. This would protect they-the-eight. This would protect Rue.</p><p>Two wolves, he could manage. They had little enough weight advantage to matter. His hands shook with firecasting and hot terror, but he drew his hunting blade from its holster, and called flame partway up his throat. Folding his wings, he dropped onto this prey.</p><p>Time stopped meaning anything as he fell and snapped his wings open, as he whipped under the treetops and the strain flattened his heart against his ribs. The wolves turned, showing fangs and fear-black eyes. Felixi was making a mistake but once again, it was too late to change that.</p><p>It went as well as a hunter could possibly hope for: a clean throat cut on one wolf; sloppy red gouges on the second. Pain blazed down Felixi's leg where the second beast had tried to hamstring him. There were two less hunting beasts and the forest was a mote safer now. He might try following whims more often, he thought with a sick weight in his gut.</p><p>The wise hunter didn't stand next to a bleeding carcass for long — not unless he wanted to fight every covetous creature in the forest. Felixi shifted grip on his knife and set about cleaning the beasts. What could be done with them now? All the folk living on Surgings Mountain would surely agree to eat wolf meat, since they had little choice otherwise. The trouble, Felixi knew, would be explaining himself. Telling a pleasant-glossed story of why he lashed out at this mountain’s wolves — some story that made a handful of sense and didn't betray his thoughts.</p><p>Thinking could come later. Felixi shunted his guilt into efficient motion, and threw leaf litter and stones over the less favourable pieces, and gathered the wolves’ meat into one rough-scraped hide he could manage to carry. He would need a meal after exerting himself so much. Hopefully he could stomach the taste of this food. If he cooked it, then they-the-eight would delightedly eat it.</p><p>Once home in his grotto, Felixi would need to clean his sealing wounds, the last errand he had burdened himself with. Rub purple avens into gouges and bind them with a clean scrap of cloth. His dragonkind body could knit worse scrapes than these.</p><p>Rue might find his kill site on a day yet to come: Felixi knew that as sure as fading daylight. She might test the blood-soaked soil with her dye and trinkets, turn over the wolf bones, and build a theory that stood on its own feet. A theory she could embellish if she saw new scars on Felixi, made by teeth. Now, then, Felixi scolded himself: these wounds of his might not scar, if fortune favoured him.</p><p>But still, while he stoked his reluctant firecasting to fly with, Felixi grew sure that Rue Tennel would find him out soon. He lacked the skills to hide forever.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0020"><h2>20. Chapter 20</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The last of the marrowbone broth went to Feor, with greens for bulk. Denelend hadn’t even simmered this batch of broth himself; firewood was scarce now, and rationed to a select few cookfires. Mother sat by the Tennel home's cooling hearth as though savouring the last rising air.</p><p>“Bring in some nettles, if you would, Denelend. I think I might just clean and pickle them. And Rue, dear? We’ll need something filling tonight. I’m told the farm folk are casting generously on a fraction of the bean field, but they’ll need time. They were digging out some slugs last I heard …”</p><p>Something filling to eat, Rue lamented. There were no more root vegetables, just the dust they left behind. No more dried herbs, except the ones held in reserve in case of illness. Rue knew the empty spaces in the Tennel home’s pantry boxes; she didn’t need to look.</p><p>“I’ll look for something.”</p><p>“Good.” Mother put on a face of fragile hope. “And I’ll gather some dandelion greens to go with it.”</p><p>Heading out into the forest, Feor at her side, Rue felt a sudden hunger to travel. To walk straight down the mountainside and down the dusty road in her memory, until she reached someplace to gather a decent meal from. She had travelled to the foothills and back before, after all, only a little breathless afterward. Surely she could manage a long walk like the ones Father used to make, if she walked on determined enough feet. Senford once said that the only true difficulty of wandering was finding a safe crevice to sleep in.</p><p>Rue's wandering whim felt pleasant for a moment before reality overtook it — the awareness that gasterslugs consumed this mountain and surely the plains around it, too. There was no surety of finding good forage within a sensible walking distance. Rue might as well return to Ordiny and borrow a pouch full of barley from her sister — and what a journey that would be. The journey had taken days by horse-drawn cart and she couldn’t risk walking for that long; Aloftway’s only Tennel daughter couldn’t dare borrow her father's ways.</p><p>In the Surgings forest, bound here by a rope around her heart, Rue paused her feet. Feor stopped at her side, watching her like her worrisome mood showed on her skin.</p><p>With a sigh, Rue rubbed his head. “Well? Where should we go?”</p><p>Mouth open, tongue dangling, Feor stared at her with the devotion of a simple dog. Hoping for more of a meal than his scant breakfast, probably. Not pointing Rue in any direction at all.</p><p>So she turned northeast, following the mountain’s slope upward. There was a great fallen branch — rotten before it fell, likely — Rue had found too late to get any useable wood, but too early for it to nourish mushrooms. That was an eightday ago and she might find some food now. Or possibly bring back rotted wood to strengthen someone's garden soil.</p><p>When she arrived, the branch was there — and surrounded by bare earth. Not one dry leaf to be found. Suspicion filled Rue: she didn’t recall the place being this neatly laid. She knelt for a better view, searching for that unlike patch of earth Felixi had talked about. She found it soon enough, the sheening spot, and tried it with the blunt tip of her fingernail. Something gelatinous shifted at her touch, the soil cracking in hairlines. Feor thrust his curious nose toward it and Rue shooed him off, with a bitten-out command of <span class="u">stay</span>.</p><p>She didn’t have a huge knife meant for killing, but the thumb-length blade of her stemming knife would serve. With its tip, Rue dug in and flicked, and flicked again harder so the slug burst up out of the soil — and it writhed on the bare earth. The slug was as long as Rue’s hand and far thicker, shiny and black, with spots like rainbow-coloured eyes. Rue stared, stunned still. But as the slug hissed watercasting vapour from its pores, loosening soil to escape into, she found her nerve. A few clumsy pushes of her small knife and the slug thrashed, then stilled. It was a simple creature enough that it felt little pain, Rue hoped. Its rainbow spots still stared.</p><p>But it was a creature and that meant it was meat. Shifting the sullied knife to her other hand, Rue snapped her fingers, and pointed. “<span class="u">Here</span>,” she told Feor.</p><p>Pushing back to her side, Feor snuffled at the slug’s wet surface. He tipped his head at it, and grumbled, and snuffled again. Carefully, like he wasn’t fully convinced he wanted to touch it, he bit the slug, snapped it up and gulped until it was gone.</p><p>“Ugh,” Rue breathed. “More of a dinner for your kind than mine.” She patted him anyway — suddenly proud of finding a solution for two problems, if a grim solution — and she turned back to the fallen branch.</p><p>One mushroom poked a white head out of the wood. Rue gave a wisp of plantcasting to its dualkind spirit — only a briefest touch of her strength, she couldn’t afford more — and sliced off two mushrooms. Little enough food to hide in her hand. And she pushed the rotten branch to roll it, sensing wriggling motions underneath. If Feor was any example to follow, wormkind could be considered food. Perhaps Aloftway's ferrin wouldn’t mind the taste of them; Rue thought of Chi and Dwo in the forest, searching, surely eating all sorts of things town folk didn’t care for.</p><p>Rue was positioning her knife tip to flick with. Then the air moved. Distant in the bushes, hardly more than a leaf pushed aside strangely. She stopped, looking at the green to her side. Air tightening her skin. The breeze turned — and beside her, Feor raised his hackles immediate, growling a vicious note.</p><p>A wolf, Rue's innards whispered. Distracted aemets in the forest were exactly what these hunters wanted, exactly the opportunity that had cost Flerring and plenty of others their lives. Blood quickening, bones beginning their terror wail, Rue straightened to her feet and the rustle of her clothes was far too loud. A creature slid through the forest shadows, a dark-blurred shape as sleek as obsidian: at least one wolf circled Rue and in breathed her scent.</p><p>“Feor,” she whispered. “<span class="u">Stay</span>.” Rue had been safe once before when she held still. She would use that shelter while it held.</p><p>Feor's growling pitched. But he held steady at her side. The wolf howled among the trees, a terribly lovely song.</p><p>Two more shapes appeared. Blurred with darkcasting and moving uneasy, but circling. One wolf jerked in its movement: limping, Rue grew sure.</p><p>Her aemet bones pleaded for her to run but she couldn't yet, not until she knew which direction to take. She had no claws and no fire —but banish it, Rue had a working mind. Her bell-clear airsense found hazy clouds of darkcasting nearer than Rue could throw a stone —but one of them was weak and she could outrun it, she surely could.</p><p>Rue saw a flicker of black fur through the oak trunks; Feor's growling jumped in pitch, his body rigid, every hair tremoring.</p><p>"<span class="u">Stay</span>," Rue said. She had to pick a direction, had to know her chance and take it before the keening instincts took her. Wasn’t this moment what a dog was for? To be protection, even if that cost the dog’s noble life? What an ugly truth Aloftway had traded for. What a reason to know an <span class="u">attack</span> command.</p><p>But her time was short; the darkcasting auras shrank and three creatures showed themselves in the leaves, the strongest emerging with white fangs shining wicked.</p><p>The wolves drew nearer and a white surge of instinct overwhelmed Rue’s thoughts, pushing her puppet limbs. All she could think was that the one mismatched wolfshape, the one limping off-tempo — was her only chance. She was past it, sprinting away with only a glancing pain where its teeth snatched at her, where it was too slow turning on its bad side.</p><p>There weren’t three shapes but four in Rue’s airsense — and they weren’t all wolves, she shrieked at herself. One was her guard dog, who hadn’t followed.</p><p>“Feor,” she choked out. “<span class="u">Here!</span>”</p><p>Nothing followed her. Rue had decided how to flee on her own feet, which angles to run at but how could she have put that into dog commands? Why hadn’t she even tried? Distant snarling tore the air and her pounding feet drowned it out, her stumbling stride hammering her airsense into a blur.</p><p>She began seeing again, bark and green and open air. And as Aloftway's street began existing, a blessedly familiar friend walked, scarlet wings folded, tail undulating. Normal as anything.</p><p>“Judellie!”</p><p>Jerking around, Judellie saw Rue with wide eyes. Firewood fell from her strong grasp and she caught Rue, she the powerful and fiery — why couldn’t Rue be any of that?</p><p>"Wolves?"</p><p>She pushed her voice out of its terror-tight hiding place. “Please.” She pointed. “Go, help him! They have Feor.”</p><p>She was pushed back gentle, one safe-stumbling step before Judellie let her go. Air slammed around Rue from leaping wingbeats and Judellie was vanishing, hurrying away. Her firecasting breath came belated in Rue’s memory.</p><p>In that instant, Rue turned back toward the forest, standing there on legs as thin as ale. The guard ring weighed on her arm. <span class="u">Protect this one</span>, it said and Rue knew the size of that truth, now. Her fingers found the wood — polished smooth, filmed with juniper.</p><p>In the forever-long moments afterward, neighbours floated closer, lingering behind Rue and asking soft-toned questions. Rue might have answered some of them: she couldn’t be sure. All she knew was Judellie reappearing over the trees and dropping hard to earth with a quivering dogshape in her arms. Feor whined as he saw Rue, and struggled. All of him quivered, Rue found now, all of him shook as the wet blood crept out.</p><p>A burn glistened on the edge of his ear where well-meant fire had touched him. Rue stared at it while Brenne worked. Such a small trouble would heal on its own with a little salve, but Rue couldn't pull her eyes from it.</p><p>She held Feor’s collar in numb-tight grip, and one of her hands rubbed his unhurt ear in a never-ending motion. She couldn't think, could only drag her gaze to Brenne's hands engulfed with the purple glow of darkcasting healing, pushing gentle at torn edges as she worked. Taut pain left Feor's body as his flesh sealed back together. They had been lucky today. Rue deserved to be called lucky after foolishness like hers.</p><p>"Whew. I think that’s the worst of it,” Brenne said. “Most of the punctures were clean. Nothing hit his his lungs or liver. I'll bind him up and he should be right as rain.” Reaching for a soapy-wet cloth and beginning the work of cleaning her hands, Brenne added, “I'm not a dog keeper but I'd guess three days of rest, Rue. Don't let him run about, he might tear something back open.”</p><p>She nodded, tongue stuck dry to her mouth.</p><p>"Thank the gods he was with you," Judellie added. She wiped sticky traces from her hide, too. “I wish there was a way to fill this whole forest with smoke. It’s the only thing wolves understand anymore.”</p><p>Like they had no end of boldness, Rue thought. They backed away from nothing except fire, because fire wasn't afraid of them.</p><p>"I wouldn't mind more smoke," Brenne said.</p><p>“Well, if the brightcasting stones are no good anymore, couldn't we make fire stones?” Rue wasn’t broadly trained in the casting arts, but she knew fiery talents could be poured into a gemstone just as well as healing could.</p><p>Brenne sighed. She wiped her hands dry on her tunic. “I had Giosso charge a fire stone for me the other day, so I could try out the smoke. Do you know what happened?"</p><p>Judellie winced. “It didn't work.”</p><p>"No. And I was plenty tired by the time I healed my burn.”</p><p>Rue recalled that scene: Brenne focused on her own hands, palms cupped together with a last spark of brightcasting. “I thought you had just spilled a cookpot or some such! Are you all right?”</p><p>“Fine enough,” Brenne said, a pout wrenching her mouth. “I can't heal my pride.”</p><p>“When you pull firecasting from a stone," Judellie said, “It comes out as a flame. You might get smoke if you wave air past a firecasting stone, but usually...” She motioned to her chest, the barrel shape of a deep-breathing skychild. “Well, it is easier to stir up smoke on the inside.”</p><p>“That’s another reason we could use korvi friends. One of four thousand reasons.” Drawing a breath, Brenne paused. “But we’ve just got to face the light.”</p><p>Judellie flicked a glance to Rue — a sharp dart of sympathy — and she said, “I learned to use my claws against creatures. I might have hatched with claws growing from my hands but I still had to learn to truly use them, you see?”</p><p>“If only we had fire and claws. But … We’ve got aemetkind and our ferrin friends.” Brenne paused, as though trying to sense the shapes of answers. “I wonder if more ferrin folk would take up new kinds of casting, maybe learn to firecast? They couldn’t manage smoke so well as korvikind but it might still make the difference for someone. Fire is closest brothers to electric, isn’t it?”</p><p>Unsureness twisted on Judellie’s face, and she nodded. “Ah, doesn’t it take years to learn a new casting?”</p><p>“Oh, sometimes. I don’t doubt that some gifted souls will learn quicker than that.” Brenne stared past the roof thatch. “I think I'll ask Shika. If anyone takes to fire, her lively heart should.”</p><p>Rue said, “And what are we aemets going to do in the meantime?”</p><p>“We …” Brenne said as her face fell.</p><p>Rue nearly bit her tongue. But no, she thought — she could have helped Feor if she had made a plan beforehand, if she had just put in the time and travail instead of forgetting it was her own weight to bear.</p><p>“I feel like I’ve told you this before," she said. “Maybe I didn’t. But I’ll say it now, Brenne: we have to grow solutions ourselves. Maybe the legends have smaller lessons than we thought. When Maize was hungry, she didn’t wait for korvi to speak to the corn plants for her. She took a step of her own. And Thia! She didn’t need korvi to stop the demon sickness.”</p><p>Brenne’s mouth tightened. She must have sensed the same image Rue did, the story-told moment where wise Thia chose to act, where she grasped a strip of willow bark and caught a demon’s terrible claws with it. Thia died. But her aemet kin lived peacefully in the wake of her sacrifice.</p><p>“They are tales for teaching,” Brenne murmured, ”aren’t they? Well, let me think. Fourteen of our villagers know a little brightcasting. Not much good as a broad-use ward anymore, but it might make a difference in a truly tight spot. Imagine digging in our heels, though! I’m not sure it would even …” She shook her head, antennae cutting the air slow. “Well. If anyone can spare a mote of strength in these next days, I’ll make suggestions to them. We'll try something, Rue.” And she looked back to Feor, rinsing out the washcloth to use on him.</p><p>Rue Tennel, heir to tinctoring and wandering skills, had plenty to suggest but no one free to listen. Stroking Feor’s fur, receiving a grateful flick of his tongue, Rue took stock of her thoughts and strengths and the burning wishes inside her. She might be the person who would forge a new path — because she might be the only one under these mountain trees who could.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0021"><h2>21. Chapter 21</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Rovingful village was conveniently located, and Syril would have freely said that to anyone who asked his thoughts. The town sat at a junction of good farmland, a clear-running river, and a stand of plains forest, so that resident folk had a little of everything available for the picking. The only basic trade item Rovingful residents lacked on any regular basis was minerals — copper, quartz, salt, and other such glittering commodities. Next time Syril got a bounty of amethyst from some miner, he told himself, he ought to fly to Rovingful to trade it. He would be met with quite a fresh-picked bouquet of delight.</p><p>But for the moment, Syril flew with mostly travelling food weighing in his cargo pouches. He had outstanding promises made in Aloftway village and it would do no good to leave that dough unbaked. Dreadful shame that he would pass through Rovingful with nothing to trade them, though; a good merchant did no such thing. If only he could snatch up an extra bounty of something.</p><p>Syril tried possibilities, hefting each of them in his thoughts. And then he wheeled high over the plains to check his bearings. There was one opportunity he hadn’t scraped the bottom of yet. He oriented himself so he would miss Rovingly and carry on southward. If the gods rained luck down on him, Syril might find some goods to trade after all.</p><p>He knew only a smattering of details about the former village site, that frightfully unlucky place. Fleetwalk, he seemed to recall its name was — although aemet folk spooked like deer when Syril dared to speak of it, or dared to ask why it had been abandoned in such a flap of a hurry.</p><p><span class="u">Take whatever is left</span>, they had assured him. Like that was a fair trade for not uttering the place’s name.</p><p>Odd trade if ever there was one — being paid not to speak — but Syril wasn’t going to check the idea’s hooves. No, indeed.</p><p>Fleetwalk was even less of a village than the last time Syril saw it: now it was barely visible from the air, some mere vague squares in the grass where houses used to be. Someone had come for the last few wood boards, the last corner poles that had poked from the ground at lonely angles.</p><p>But all that meant was that Syril needed to look more carefully. Poke about in the remnants and try his luck. He landed in what had been the street, once, and held his breath against momentary clouds of churned dust. Blowing his flight smoke away, Syril began his circuit walk.</p><p>Most of the building-spaces were familiar. Syril had checked them before and found perfectly good buckets, and rope, and vegetable knives. He couldn’t count on such luck this time. He eyed every knucklewidth of this space and saw grass, and hearth stones, and weather-bleached lumps of fabric too flat to hide much of anything. A few glinting specks in the street dirt turned out to be obsidian beads — and Syril hurried those his pouch, but they would make a sparse necklace indeed. Visiting this place began to seem like a poor decision. Goodness, but Reyardine House had taught Syril better than this, winging off like a startled thrush the moment he had an idea.</p><p>The mage home tempted him, that faintly suggested rectangle at the very centre of everything. It had been a handsome building, made of knot-speckled wood and tied with green-dyed rope. Dreadful how a demon or two could destroy folk’s years of work — simply dreadful. If circumstances had sprung up differently, Syril could have flown here to trade herbs or healing stones or some similar want. This place likely fell to an illness demon; those were the town-destroyers, more often than not. Beastly things.</p><p>Syril entered the mage home’s space. Breeze pulled at his feathers and set beads swaying against his hide. Each pace he took cracked grass stems under his feet — and it seemed loud, a sort of proclamation that a Reyardine was here.</p><p>To the right of the former hearth fire, storage boxes remained but their bark panels had degraded terribly in the light and wind, unable to carry more weight than a daisy petal now. Syril crouched, tail held level with the ground, and tugged the crumbling boxes aside with one careful claw. Funny how an utter lack of a house could still feel like a house, like walls stood present behind Syril, like he might call out some conversational question and get an answer.</p><p>The storage boxes were picked bare already; Syril only found squirming grubs between box and ground, and grubs weren’t something he cared to fill his pouch with, High Ones, certainly not. He stood. He hissed through his closed teeth and scratched at his mane. This might be a gamble he lost.</p><p>Except that Syril found his gaze lingering on another miserable fabric lump. Some storage sack too decayed to carry anything, the fibres warped from rain. But it had still been a pouch in a mage’s home. No one stocked useful bits like a mage. Syril went to it, enthusiasm catching again inside him. The pouch burlap shredded the moment he pulled at it, several pouches’ worth of piled fibre. And as he threw a double fistful of it aside, wrinkling his nose against the musty smell, something underneath grabbed the light. Here were gemstones. A whole dozen of them, polished enough to grab light.</p><p>He laughed. This, sure as a thrown stone falling to earth, was the good fortune Syril had been hoping for. And he knew exactly where he would bring these specimens. Particularly the largest stone, the one that truly caught his eye.</p><p>Syril landed in Rovingful some hours later — and he landed hard enough to send a hot lance through both ankles, burdened as he was. A few moments’ chatter in the street got him a welcome rush of trades, the Fleetway quartz stones buying him more barley and green peas to nourish folk with. But he hurried those trades in a way that made him wince inwardly. He had a plan for the largest gemstone. He was captivated by the weight on his left hip, as though it were glowing with fire heat already.</p><p>From within Rovingful's mage home, the aemet mageling called for him to enter. Then the ferrin mageling paused to smile bright at him. Gods shower them both with providence, whatever their names were. They still hovered around that poor traveller fellow, Senford — who didn’t look as though he had moved since Syril visited last, still laying withered in a sickbed, his foot submerged in a drifting salad of herbed water.</p><p>“Good day, friends,” Syril said. With a particularly low dip in his bow he added, “Particularly you, my good Wennering.”</p><p>Senford smiled with only his mouth. He faced the ceiling, hands folded together on his chest, very nearly serene. “Thanks for your thoughts.”</p><p>“Any amount of them you’d like, friend! I have a supply of thoughts that can’t be matched, bet a turnip on it!”</p><p>Chuckling, one hoarse release of breath, Senford unlaced one hand from the other and rubbed his closed eyes. His leg bulged frightfully where it met the soaking water, the blue-dark flesh as taut as an overstuffed pillow; Syril once again regretted looking at it.</p><p>“If it’s all fine and well," Syril said, untying a pouch as he approached, “I’ll head directly to my point! What brings me here is something that caught my eye, and I think it’ll catch yours, too.”</p><p>Syril pulled his lucky find out of the pouch cloth. The oblong gem was large enough to fill his hand overflowing and it took well to the hearth fire's light, its inner hues awakening like rising flame. Senford took a slow moment to pry his eyes open — and they went large immediately with interest.</p><p>“This’ll take a firecasting charge better than plain quartz and, if I might be frank as a cliff’s edge, you had best use a fire-favouring stone for what you’ve got in mind.”</p><p>“I’m sure,” Senford breathed. “Bring it here, Syril.”</p><p>He brought the gemstone within Senford’s reach. The fellow raised one spine-knuckled hand to it.</p><p>“Is it heavy? I was hoping for something that fits a typical tunic pocket.”</p><p>Syril craned his neck back, squinting at the stone, tossing the weight in his hand. He cast a questioning glance to the aemet mageling — who smiled bemused and pulled open her tunic pocket to show its size.</p><p>“It should fit,” Syril decided, “although I’d hope that it’s a well-sewn pocket. The more important part is that a stone of this size and quality should hold plenty of casting. One great burst of firecasting, or a handful of smaller sparks.”</p><p>“Good. If you get that charged with firecasting, and then bring it to her …” Dropping his arm, Senford waved toward the pouch by his bedside; its contents leaped back into Syril’s memory, the entire wealth of small treasures he had sifted through his fingers. “You can call most of this harvest yours. A few things are promised to these folk spending so much of their time on me. But the more commonly shared goods, you can have.”</p><p>All the supplies Senford had wandered for. Well, the arrangement was more complex than that, Syril was sure, but his thoughts kept jamming on the idea of how laborious it would be to <span class="u">walk</span> the whole breadth of the land.</p><p>“Fine and generous of you, friend! But I won’t take your goods this moment.” He grinned. “I’ve got enough to carry, you see.”</p><p>Senford regarded him, eyes half closed. “I wish our paths had crossed sooner. Just … take my word to them, and make sure the Tennels have got some tools to use. I can’t thank you enough, and Aloftway will value your kindness.”</p><p>Syril had no doubt of that: nothing kept him in business like a community thinking fondly of him. “Just remember the Reyardine name, whatever you need! I’ll be be back before you know it, friend.”</p><p>Perhaps that wasn’t the best turn of phrase to say to a fellow waiting in a sickbed, simply lying there for days past by and more days to come. Syril certainly wouldn’t have been able to stand it, goodness, no. Senford hummed agreement anypace.</p><p>“And,” he added small, “Would you bring them a gift? And a message?”</p><p>“With plenty of relish,” Syril said. He sat on his tail to listen.</p><p>It was long two days’ flight from Rovingful back to Widely, and days full of firecasting they certainly were. Syril needed a fully-stoked blaze in his chest to counter the weight he carried. Folk said that a korvi could fly with half his weight in cargo; one corn kernel more than that and he might as well try to lift a mountain. Syril had never tested that sliver of wisdom but he entertained the idea of borrowing a balance scale sometime. He surely carried one barley grain over his limit today.</p><p>It was a tall-packed pile of relief to see Widely approaching, its roofs and buildings and its orderly fields — fields with their bald spots fuzzed over with green, the crop plants beginning to grow back in. Syril landed in the street like a dropped sack, blew his smoke toward the sky in one dark column and hurried his feet. He felt unbalanced as a two-legged horse and hungry besides, but he had one task left before he could rest this night.</p><p>Widely’s mage was a truly clever aemet, not just in the use of her own castings but in the skills of her aides. Having ferrin magelings who knew firecasting — now, that was a bushel basket heaped full of good sense. One of the collar-decked magelings accepted Syril's prize gemstone and said she would need time to muster up a firecasting charge. No trouble: Syril had a friend to visit, one who could provide him a bowl of some fine-stewed meal. He would cheerfully call it time well spent.</p><p>Vraya wasn’t hiding in a barrel today, or behind one of her own tables — but outside, the korvi assistant said. Behind the back wall of the inn. Well, Syril thought, that would be a poor choice of location for a latrine so he hoped greatly that Vraya was taking up gardening.</p><p>He rounded the inn, following its thatched wall. Vraya crouched there, her wings spread for balance, her tail a long, braced curve against the ground. She sat unmoving. She was looked downward, her horntips pointing at the sky.</p><p>“Good Vraya,” Syril asked, “pardon my curiosity, but what have you got there?”</p><p>She turned her head to him, eyes crinkling with an uneasy smile. “Oh, Syril. It’s nothing.”</p><p>“At the very least, it seems to be a plentiful amount of dirt.” He walked a path around her, craning to see what her wings sheltered. She crouched over a shallow hole — with a piece of unsightly something at its bottom.</p><p>“Last Seasumonth,” she obliged him, “I had a piece of thornwood root left over. I had already made a rootpot for the guests, you see, that filled my largest pot to its rim. I wasn’t going to need one little knuckle of root anytime soon. So I thought I’d bury it. See if it would grow.”</p><p>Syril wouldn’t have guessed that remnant to be a thornwood root if he had twenty-eight chances to try. “Dear goodness, friend.” Truly, it was a pathetic state for a food plant. He put a hand to his chest, regretting that he had asked. “Did you water it?”</p><p>“Are you supposed to? I’ve heard that brings a rot demon.”</p><p>“In all the honesty I’ve got,” Syril said, waving a hand so his quartz chip bracelets clattered together, “and that’s a pond of honesty large enough to swim in, I wouldn’t know.”</p><p>She hummed a sad, wavering note, and looked back to her deceased bit of root. “I didn’t see anything sprouting, but I supposed it might be growing more roots before it forged its way up into the light. Really, I should have expected this.”</p><p>It seemed wrong to linger over this hole. Produce gone to waste was a sad enough state when it was hurried off to a Middling circle. “What made you try to dig it up, friend? If you haven’t got anything to feed yourself—“</p><p>“Oh, strike that thought,” she said kindly. Bracing her hands on her aproned knees, Vraya stood. “Widely can feed myself and everyone else for the days to come. We won’t be holding any feasts but we won’t be chewing leather.”</p><p>Syril waited for her to gather up more of a thought. The root’s presence still itched at him — skies above, but that sad remnant needed to be buried up and he wanted to kick at the dirt to do just that. Syril held himself in poise, bracing his tail to sit against.</p><p>“I keep thinking of those Aloftway folk,” Vraya said. “Not that I’d take a meal from a Widely neighbour’s mouth, but I wish there were something I could do right now. It seemed like a fine idea to fly over there — only for a day, maybe. My innkeeps can mind this place for a day. But unless Aloftway would like me to cook food they don’t have and sing a song about it, I can’t imagine what I’d do.”</p><p>Syril put on two-thirds of a frown before he got a grip on the thought. If Vraya meant that she couldn’t plantcast and make a fine, ripe meal spring up from the earth, then she spoke a full bucket of truth: she was useless, indeed. Most folk of their feather were. Syril tapped his chin. “Well, now, there’s got to be something a fine, kind-hearted example of a true-hearted korvi can do.”</p><p>“You’re too much,” Vraya said — as she smiled tight and bashful.</p><p>“Well, if you’re not preparing some foodstuff or entertaining folk, Aloftway would likely ask you to guard aemet folk when they’re walking about, I’d bet a bushel of cotton bolls on that. They told me the most striking tale of wolves stalking aemets in the forest. Some of the beasts won’t even yield to anything but force! Their korvikind are both working as guards.” Syril felt a crawl all down his back and shuffled his wings to bury the sensation. “Far and away the most awful profession I’ve ever heard of!”</p><p>"Brutish, I'm sure. But someone's got to do it.” Vraya peered at him. “You’ve never caught your own dinner, I suppose?”</p><p>“Sky above, perish the thought! You have?” Syril couldn’t say he would have guessed — a lovely entrepreneur like Vraya, out dispatching some unfortunate animal.</p><p>“I went out winging with my cousin, once,” she admitted. “He showed me how to drop onto a small creature, in case I was ever travelling across wilds. So I'd know how to catch a snake or a partridge — something that will give a few bites of good meat. The gods wouldn’t want their children to go hungry. That was what he told me.”</p><p>“Vraya, my friend. I’ll dance for an acorn, I’ll dig a pit for a berry, but banish me if I ever need to … to <span class="u">hunt</span>.”</p><p>“Digging a pit? That doesn’t sound like you, Syril. You’d... hmm. Trade a dozen things to eleven neighbours, and then trade a twelfth neighbour to dig for you. And you’d haggle your payment up to three berries.”</p><p>He crowed a laugh. “A fine and accurate proposition if ever I’ve seen one!” He flicked his wing feathers open to frame that truth.</p><p>Vraya regarded him, a thoughtful mist in her eyes. “But it’s not a matter of someone wishing us to dance or dig a pit, is it? Tell me, Syril: what would you do if you couldn’t do anything?”</p><p>“That will never happen, sure as earth.” His chest swelling with pride, Syril said, “No Reyardine sits about being useless. Not when we’ve got quick wings and quicker tongues!“</p><p>“Hmm,” Vraya said, and kept smiling.</p><p>“I’ve got all the foodstuff and coal I can carry,” he retorted. Honestly, he couldn’t imagine why Vraya would doubt him; he recalled a dozen delivery flights flown for her and a golden aura of success surrounding all of them. “And if that doesn’t suit Aloftway’s needs, I can trade them for something nicer.”</p><p>“I know, friend. I didn’t mean to wound you with it.” She brushed a film of dust from her apron. “Would you like some help flying your supplies over? Don’t strain yourself, now.”</p><p>Resettling his wingtips over each other — since the needled feeling clung to his insides and his feathers simply wouldn’t lay right — Syril was quite sure he could fly his own goods. He would never think of compromising himself and his enterprise. Other than the one time he had. In all measures of fairness, plums were heavier than they looked at a hurried flick of a glance. But that one slippery mess of a time made no difference; Syril had found his way back then, and he would manage any other sticky situation he found himself stepping into in the future.</p><p>“No, truly," he said. “Thank you, good Anduille. You ought to worry about finding some goods to share, yourself! Haven’t you got favours you might call in?” Folk as generous as Vraya always had a few equally giving friends.</p><p>She looked to the sky, eyes flicking like she might spot those allies flying past. “Now that you shine a light on it …”</p><p>Lowering his voice, Syril added, “Now is as fine a time as any to bring some goods! Aloftway welcomed me warmly, indeed!”</p><p>Vraya nodded, her face was tense as a cricket’s leg. “I’ll need to string some favours together, but I’m sure there’s something I could give. I’ve got more than this miserable thornwood, I should hope!”</p><p>Cheering a person up certainly had its own sort of energy, a brightness shone over everything and a darkness that refreshed the soul. Syril certainly felt fresher after bidding Vraya fair flying and watching her wing away into the goldenrod-lit evening. He would be thoroughly gone from Widely by the time she returned — but they might sight each other later, somewhere in the wind-blown sky.</p><p>As for himself, Syril spoke with Vraya’s aides about a large-measured meal and a night’s rest. This Reyardine had a task waiting for him come morning.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0022"><h2>22. Chapter 22</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In the midmorning, Rue took Feor on a walk through the village street, a mundane loop taken at a wary pace. She watched each of the dog's joints pivoting, all the muscle motions under his coat. Feor favoured two legs and moved his neck stiffly, but he acted well, pricking his ears at every motion in the street. It would be a day of rest for Feor, a day he stayed calm by Mother’s side. Rue only hoped that Felixi would be satisfied with what she could forage today — likely a token amount of food that would rattle at the bottom of a half-bushel basket.</p><p>Pausing at the Tennel home door curtain, Rue’s heart jumped and she discerned a korvi in the air, someone broad sailing over the trees. Syril of Reyardine returned, all crimson and shimmer in the midmorning light — and he flapped hard in the turbulent air, labouring as Felixi might with a burden. He landed at the west end of the street, beaming delight even as he heaved for breath; folk hurried toward him, calling greetings.</p><p>“Mother,” Rue called, “the Reyardine is back!”</p><p>Inside, Mother took air in sharp and hurried to her feet, Denelend beside her. They formed a group, with Rue keeping a hand tight on Feor’s collar to hold him at a moderate walk.</p><p>“—And another thousand apologies for how much time I took in the flying, friends,” Syril cried beyond the crowd. With his claws, he was prying at one of several cargo pouches knotted around his waist, all of them roundly full of goods. “But I wanted to give a good bushel of effort to finding you, ah, well, some bushels of goods!”</p><p>“Give him space, please,” Brenne called, her round shape moving forward in the crowd. “What have you brought, good Reyardine?”</p><p>“Aid for you!” Straightening, his chest puffing proud, Syril said, “I visited five villages and all of them were glad to trade scant, or simply give some bounty to you and offer Aloftway the best of wishes. Here’s coal from Craigmost — mind yourself, now, that pouch is dusty as a mine shaft once it’s open. And a little salt from Dwelling, and marblefruit. They harvested a fine crop of marblefruit this year, one of the best I’ve seen this elden! Oh, and barley and peas from Rovingful.”</p><p>Hands caught each pouch he offered. The shapes of marblefruit passed from hand to hand, pulpy flesh shifting slight wherever grip squeezed it.</p><p>“Oh, thank you, friend,” Brenne cried. She received the salt in a tight-tied leather pouch and her hands laced protective around it. “You told them all about Aloftway, didn’t you? And where we’re found?”</p><p>“I did put in some good words for you. It’s a matter of putting them in the right ears, of course, and I did what I could!”</p><p>Nodding, Brenne’s hands wound tighter around her own gift. “When you visit those places again, please send our gratitude. We’ll share the favour back when we can. Hopefully with camellia, or something else befitting a mountain village.”</p><p>“Fine and well, friend! Ah, strike me down if I should forget this — Elova? Where might I find Elova Tennend?”</p><p><span class="u">Tennel</span>, someone muttered.</p><p>Syril’s lips parted grinning, his feathers rising. “Ah, yes, please forgive my mind, scattered fistful of seeds that it is!”</p><p>“I’m here,” Mother obliged him. She advanced and so did her group, Rue tugged by her arm, Denelend shuffling beside on two feet. In the middle of everyone, Mother looked older than Rue expected, a face not quite familiar enough after so much worrying. Her one strand of brown hair stood out from the green. Syril managed a more genuine smile for her, his wing quills fanning slight behind him.</p><p>“A message for you, my friend. Senford said you enjoy these," and Syril produced a cloth-wrapped bundle to press into Mother’s hands. “As well, he entrusted me with this wish: that you remain like a cup of tea. Welcoming, warm, steeped to be strong, and most importantly, here to greet him when he returns.”</p><p>Murmurs ran through the gathered neighbours, smiles touching their faces. Like their light fed him, Syril grinned wider.</p><p>Mother lowered her head while she smiled, tucking the sentiment away into herself for later. She would make a prayer of it, a moment of quiet with those words to reflect on. “Kind thanks to you, Syril.” She pulled open the cloth — enough to sense round shapes, Rue guessed rosehips — and she hurried the package into her tunic pocket.</p><p>“No trouble, friend! I’m glad to repeat a fine poem like that! Also, Rue?” Syril laid a deeply pleased look on her. “I’ve got another delivery meant for you, friend.”</p><p>He reached into his one remaining pouch — the one full of mismatched, jumbled shapes — and he pulled out a smooth, square-edged weight. It was the light-grabbing surface of a faceted gemstone. One with a spark flickering red inside.</p><p>“Your father made arrangements for this and he told me that whatever storm or strife crossed my path, I was to give this to you regardless.”</p><p>He pressed the stone into Rue’s grasp, his bony hands flight-warm, the gemstone's surface cool. Between two skins, Syril’s scarlet and Rue’s green, the gem looked a shade of orange that couldn’t decide what it wanted to be.</p><p>“A … tourmaline?” Rue tried. The spark inside was firecasting. What she had wished so many times for, now resting calm in her hands.</p><p>“Blaze beryl, I do believe! Best quality I’ve seen this side of the Chasmfeld mines, and there’s no finer stone for firecasting, take a jeweler’s word!” Snapping into a calmer tone, Syril added, “Senford said this was for his daughter Rue, in hopes that she’ll never need to use it, and in farther-flung hopes that she’ll trade it away for some actual desire of hers.”</p><p>A smile ran over Rue’s face; Father did try his hardest to provide. She clutched the stone tight. “I'll try. I hope he’s got an acorn left to his name …”</p><p>“Ah, well, I can’t say so and swear that’s the truth, no.” Syril preened his mane with idle fingers. “But he’s staying with magefolk who are interested in his tales, and possibly his foraging skill once he’s balanced back on his feet. I’m sure he’ll manage!”</p><p>And with that, Syril turned away, pulling air between the two of them. He asked crowing questions about the food, about how Aloftway would divide it, and if anyone needed copper because the beads he wore could be smelted easily enough, incidentally.</p><p>Rue was left with the fiery beryl in her hands, the crystal looking a muted shade of orange against her aemet skin. That spark inside would be useless for generating smoke — unless she cared to experience the same clumsy burns Brenne had. No, this casting stone was for flame. In case Rue was ever faced with wolves again, looking at their presence and their bared-knife teeth.</p><p>Father must have known, she thought. Which was absurd — of course he knew Aloftway faced troubles, when Syril of Reyardine had specifically sought him out to share news and gather aid. But in the truth-fed core of her being, Rue knew that Father was thinking of riddle solutions. He knew these early years wouldn’t come easily, and would be fraught with fear. He knew there would be difficult times where aemet folk wished to run. But when a person was too quick to run, they never truly saw anything.</p><p>Now, Rue could rely on more than aemet instinct — because she had a flame meant for her use. Imagine not needing to ask another for help. She could make the choice herself, call forth a power with her own hands and chase away fierce beasts. It was a thought as potent as brandy. Rue cast her senses around and found Judellie tall among the milling aemets. She was warm with fire herself — and Rue went to her, hearth-drawn.</p><p>“That's what Senford sent you?” Judellie peered curiously down her snout. “I thought it might be more food.”</p><p>“I should hope not, I’d break my teeth on this. Do you know how to use a fire stone?”</p><p>“I do, yes! I charged one for your father once, actually.” Judellie picked up the blaze beryl and turned it to see the square crystal flash, misting over with thought. “Feels like just flame in here. You know how to start a light stone, don’t you?”</p><p>“Yes. Just brightcasting, not dark. But …” Rue waved a hand, searching for words. “If this is flame, not just light, won’t it burn me, too? Since it isn’t my casting, and it needs to come out of the stone, around my hands … You see what I mean, don’t you?”</p><p>It felt like an obtuse thing to ask. But Judellie only smiled like a sister.</p><p>“It won't hurt if you use it properly. Same as a knife, you see? It is just a matter of learning how the fire thinks. I can show you how to cast with it, and charge the stone again when you are finished.”</p><p>That was the second of Rue’s fears — that learning to coax out and control the fire would mean wasting her stone. She was receiving such plentiful gifts all at once.</p><p>“Thank you, Judellie, bless your heart. Can I grow you something in exchange?”</p><p>“Exchange? Oh, forget that. If I show you how to use fire for yourself, you won’t need me to guard you so much, yes? That is a trade already.”</p><p>“You should be a merchant.”</p><p>She laid a hand on Rue’s shoulder. “I would rather get things done, I think.”</p><p>They went to the training ground behind Mara’s home, the bare patch of ground where folk would train their castings in any normal, thriving village. Rue might be a good example to the rest of Aloftway, if she made a habit of this.</p><p>“All right,” Judellie told her. “Try it. Think like... Like you are talking to a person and getting to know them.”</p><p>Firecasting had a far different feel from plantcasting; presumably, that was why the two elements struggled to coexist in one person’s body and spirit. Rue’s innate casting feared this fire. Plantcasting built in her palms at the slightest thought, but held back reluctant from her skin and the gemstone contacting it.</p><p>Firecasting wouldn’t hurt, Rue assured herself and her essence. Firecasting was a tool to be used, not some wild thing. This was a skill to be commanded. With more courage and pressing, the plantcasting crept to Rue’s palms and lit green. And in a moment that took years, her casting touched someone else’s flame to wake it.</p><p>Judellie’s suggestions were distant things past the clash of colours, the stampede of sensations and feelings. But as time passed unmeasured, Rue succeeded in firming her thoughts, raising thorns in her plantcasting, being sure enough for the firecasting to obey her and flicker out of the gemstone. First a single flame. Then a torrent spilling onto the dirt, the startling sight of flame swirling away like a light-gilded wind.</p><p>“See?” Judellie said. “It doesn’t burn if you are sure. If you think you might have trouble, you can wet your hands, too.”</p><p>“I hadn’t thought it would go … outward like that,” Rue confessed. “Horizontally. Hearth fires don’t do that.”</p><p>“Because they don’t have a reason to.” Judellie thought, maybe shuffling words for analogies, and she asked simply, “Do you want to try it once more?”</p><p>“That would be the sound thing to do, yes.” Rue watched sand-grain-sized flames bubbling on the beryl’s surface, and pushed idly at them with her tendrils of plantcasting. “Where did you learn to use these?”</p><p>“When I was young.” Judellie beckoned, and Rue gave the stone to her. “I was doing my wandering — doing it late, actually. I was thirty-seven when I began. And some aemet friends I was staying with wanted fire stones to light their hearths, so they showed me how to store away what I already have. Just like this.” She closed her eyes over the stone, caged it with her long, clawed fingers and blew a glowing stream of firecasting into its core. Fire condensed and settled into a flickering spark; it looked like Rue had never used the stone at all. Judellie turned gaze back to Rue. “It seemed like a good skill to have. I didn’t want to be one of those performing sorts, running my tongue and trading bits all day so I could have a meal. Just listen to the Reyardine! He has to say eight thousand words for every trade. Too tiring.”</p><p>A chuckle escaped Rue — because the Reyardine seemed to enjoy running his tongue, at least. “You made a good choice, I think.”</p><p>Because if Rue was honest, it was the same choice she herself had made. Here was that sense of otherkind worlds, the real lives of other folk that aemets only pretended to understand.</p><p>"We are learning a lot living here, aren't we? In Aloftway?" Setting the blaze beryl back in Rue's palm, Judellie tipped her head. “There is no asking someone else to do it. We are all we have. I've fought to protect my family — several times, too. Not many korvi can say that.”</p><p>"Fought against something more intent than a basilisk," Rue added. She craved details of that incident, she found. “You said it fled from just smoke?"</p><p>“Mmm, yes. When basilisk decide to fight, they are more … more song-and-dance than wolves. They hiss and show their teeth, and they crackle all over with electricasting so their feathers go—" and she flared her hands, eight long digits to look like puffed feathers. “But they know I am the bigger lizard and that their poison won’t make enough difference. They're rude, not foolish.”</p><p>But despite such a scrap of previous experience, Judellie had charged at danger with hard eyes and ready claws the very first time Aloftway needed her. Failed to save Flerring but she had succeeded for herself. No one questioned that she knew how to defend — and likely, no one other than Rue had even bothered to wonder.</p><p>“We’ve been relying on you to follow at our sides and do guard work,” Rue said low, tucking the blaze beryl into her pocket. “But we could have just had you and Giosso charge stones. We could have taken measures to bear some of the responsibility.”</p><p>“Maybe.” Frowning tentative, Judellie shook her head. “In all truth, I didn’t think fire would be so easy for you to use, Rue. It must like you. Or … fit well with your spirit. Not everyone has the spirit it takes to fight, even if the other choices are worse.” She tapped a finger against the barrel curve of her chest. “But, it seems I have a piece left in here from old times. And you folk need it, so it is yours.”</p><p>From her own tendencies and her bits of life already lived, Judellie was confident. That was a lesson to follow. Taking action didn’t need to be a grand effort, Rue thought with an ache in her gut. It didn’t need to be a composite planned down to its every thread — as long as some talents and scraps were focused toward the right ends.</p><p>Father might have thought that, walking among the trees soon to be Aloftway. They didn’t have a precise plan for this new village, but he and Judellie and more friends both new and known would all gather, bring their self-scraps here and, under the maples, together try. However stupid the effort was, Rue could see the weave of it now.</p><p>“Thank you,” she told Judellie. Fussing brief at her pocket contents, Rue put the blaze beryl on top of her tinctoring kit, easy to snatch up if needed. “You’ve done a fine job of keeping me safe thus far, but I’ll try to manage it better myself.”</p><p>“Mmm. Call me if you need me, yes?”</p><p>“I think the others will need you more.”</p><p>Judellie nodded, her eyes pond-deep with something like pride.</p><p>Rue thought fondly of Feor while she left the village. He didn’t want to sit today; he didn’t want to guard the well-kept Middling circle however much he liked Mother. But the dear beast would fare better resting. And everyone on the mountain would be a crumb safer since they had an additional korvi nearby: Syril of Reyardine had agreed to fetch firewood and stay with Aloftway for a day, Brenne reported. Although he clearly didn’t care much for the idea.</p><p>Rue still had foraging to do if she wanted Felixi's information, and there was little time to spend on it. Carrying a basket already holding three marblefruit and a measure of Brenne’s salt, she walked in twisting lines, raking the bare-patched forest with her eyes and her airsense. A few fern shoots went into the basket. Wild mint leaves. A handful of birdcherries — since Rue was cautiously sure korvi made wine from those, so they had to be a digestible food for dragonkind. The daylight turned gold as rue flowers and she veered east, toward the daisy field with her sense pressed outward. The fire stone was a reassurance, heavy in her pocket.</p><p>A spot in the forest air caught Rue’s attention. Like a clearing between bowed branches but she had never sensed a space here before. Rue stopped. The clearing moved closer — a patch of darkcasting approaching her. The wolves knew she went to the daisy field to receive meat. If they were impatient, they might not wait for Felixi to arrive at all. Rue's pulse sped, and the possibility of using her fire stone lost its shine.</p><p>She walked quicker now, the crunch of her footsteps speeding up. Maples and hawthorns and moss-furred contours whipped past. A darkcasting shape followed her, a radiance in Rue’s senses. A howl sounded to the north, cutting the forest air like thunder; another howl answered from the south.</p><p>Rue ran and the daisy field came nearer. Grass appeared through the trees and the wind combed inward, touching Rue’s skin, promising open sky. She slipped between saplings, arrived in the meadow and found herself alone with the grass and the daisies. The darkcasting shapes dissolved among leaves and dogshapes revealed themselves. As Rue put the basket down and grabbed useless at her pocket’s contents, her fear-honed sense found a third predator's shape: Felixi approached overhead, wings wide to land.</p><p>She could feel the shifting of leaf litter under dark-muffled paws, see a flash of yellow eyes. But Rue wasn’t alone. <span class="u">I’m your guard now</span>, Felixi had laughed but he hadn’t denied it for one heartbeat. Hand inside her pocket, fire stone firm under her fingertips, Rue backed away from the dark-spotted forest on fear-tight legs.</p><p>With a rush of air washing over her, Felixi put feet and tailtip to earth.</p><p>“Wolves,” Rue blurted. “I was followed.”</p><p>His jaws opened, teeth piercing the air. Smoke bloomed from him and drifted past Rue — grey curls spreading a warning through the air, a presence that penetrated the forest air. The two wolf-shapes stopped.</p><p>“Still coming?” Felixi asked in rough voice.</p><p>Rue focused around her thrumming pulse. No movement, no more of their dark evasion. “They’re— They’ve stopped.”</p><p>More smoke poured out of Felixi, more billowing curls blowing past Rue and a smell like wood on the hearth. The wolf-shapes lingered. They turned one resentful step at a time, and they blurred away into the beyond.</p><p>Letting out her held breath, Rue ran her palms on her tunic. And as she settled inside, she sensed the high hackle of Felixi’s feathers. As she rounded and met his eyes, she knew another strange moment where he stared. And if Rue wasn’t mistaken—</p><p>“What did you do to attract their attention, hmm?” Felixi snapped.</p><p>—If Rue wasn’t mistaken, he was quivering. Enough to stir his hackled feathers.</p><p>“I didn’t do anything but leave my home and breathe the air,” she told him. “That’s enough, of late.”</p><p>He blew more of his smoke away, a sigh like an answer.</p><p>“Thank you for the use of your fire,” Rue added.</p><p>“Hardly,” he snapped. “Only a fool uses fire in the middle of a grass field, I’m sure you can imagine why. Particularly when it’s been this long since a good, hard rain.”</p><p>Rue pressed her mouth: her fire stone was a weight of guilt, suddenly, filling a pocket of her tunic. She nodded. “Well, now … If we’re being particular, then thank you for your smoke.”</p><p>He had nothing to say, only a tight-held mouth and the gradual settling of his plumage. His smoke was a fading garland in the air.</p><p>She swallowed, and tried, “But you see, don’t you? That’s what happens every time a wolf lays eyes on an Aloftway aemet. If we aren’t fortunate enough to have a korvi nearby …”</p><p>He huffed again, like coughing up something unpleasant. “I’ve only seen a handful of wolves on the leg. I thought there were at least fifteen beasts on this mountain, but nowhere near that many are out hunting — today and yesterday, that is.”</p><p>Wolves did build families. They hunted together and called for their allies. Folk said that if one wolf was ill or denned up with new pups, its kin would even bring it food. But if the whole of Surgings Mountain was hungry, there wouldn’t be spare food to bring. Plant food grew scarce, and Aloftway’s snares captured less and less for the dogs, so why would only a few of the wolves bear the effort of hunting?</p><p>“That doesn’t match up,” she murmured.</p><p>“Now,” Felixi added with a flipped hand, “there might be wolves in the thick brush where I can’t see them. Blended into the shadows, perhaps. I’m not sure precisely where their den is, in all frankness.”</p><p>“Don’t they return to their den …?”</p><p>“Of course they do, I simply didn’t see them doing it. Their old den is caved in, it’s useless as dry water. They must have scraped out a new one nearer to Aloftway.”</p><p>Nearer to Aloftway. Closer to the peoplekind they had decided were prey. Fear percolated in Rue as she imagined all the crevices and overhangs and old, bent trees that might be shelter for creatures: plenty were marked on her map and in her mind. “You don’t have any idea at all where the den is?”</p><p>“I told you I don’t.”</p><p>“Please, Felixi. I’m only asking.”</p><p>He ruffled and resettled, and laid an eye on Rue. “I’ll keep watching. Do you need a food creature?”</p><p>“We do. As soon as you can, actually. We’ve got food for ourselves, care of Syril of Reyardine, but the dogs need real meat.”</p><p>“The Reyardine brought you food? That's good of him.”</p><p>Rue smirked, thinking of Syril’s chattering tales and how little Felixi would care for them. “He’s got his uses. We’ve asked him to—“</p><p>Movement in the forest. A narrow muzzle pushing through leaves.</p><p>Rue looked to the spot and grabbed for more sense, more textures; she distantly felt Felixi turn his keen dragon eyes to the same place. The furred shapes came closer and now Rue felt truly ridiculous: they were small, bounding shapes in the trees and they couldn’t be anything but friends.</p><p>“Ferrin,” she admitted.</p><p>Felixi hummed, and then raised his voice loud. “Friends?”</p><p>Barking cries sounded and the group of ferrin hurried their movements, edging along bowing branches until their faces showed through the leaves of an ironwood. One face brightened immediate.</p><p>“Hello,” Chi called, and pointed with one short arm. “Rue! She is Rue.”</p><p>Chittering, shifting their ears like discussions, the wild ferrin swarmed down the tree trunk and into the meadow, Dwo and six others of mixed fur colours. Chi’s family, surely — they-the-eight. They clustered at Rue’s feet, a multitude of friends stirring the air with living breath. It hadn’t occurred to Rue before this moment but the forest had been lonely, seeded with only her obliged dog and one fellow who was barely a friend. All this living motion was a mundane gift. Rue crouched, her hands hung in front of her, useless for the moment but there if anyone wished to sniff them.</p><p>“I sensed wolves near here, just a few moments ago,” she said. “Be careful, all of you.”</p><p>“We smell wolves,” Dwo agreed. He paused long enough to consider Rue once more. Then he hopped closer to Felixi, his bare-patched tail waving. “You are safe?”</p><p>A smile tugged the corner of Felixi’s mouth. “Always. You should worry about yourselves more.”</p><p>But he still had air under his feathers. Still a stiffness about him, a rigidness to his posture like he was carved of brittle stone. He flicked a glance to Rue — as though her presence was the strangeness here — and his beginning of a smile was gone. Dwo sniffed momentarily at Felixi’s leg and didn’t seem to care for whatever he learned, his ears flattening.</p><p>“You can smell the wolves,” Felixi asked the ferrin. “Do you know where they made their new den?”</p><p>“Far,” Dwo said. His ears laid gradually back.</p><p>“Not close to … other place,” added another ferrin.</p><p>A third ferrin chirped, and gestured broad toward the forest. Ears shifted and Rue wanted yet again to understand.</p><p>Chi decided, in a sure and clear tone, “The wolves moved. They are more close to Aloftway. No den yet … They are looking.”</p><p>They circled Aloftway and hadn’t even picked a home den, a fixed location of any sort. Aloftway was terror-stricken enough without the wolves flowing like a chill in the wind; aemetkind on this mountain already had no free air to breathe.</p><p>“We … The wolves are coming closer to us.” she tried. Follow plain facts, she told her growing fear. She couldn’t stop thinking. “We aemets can sense them out hunting. They aren’t scared.”</p><p>The ferrin tilted quizzical ears.</p><p>“Sensed …?” Chi looked to Felixi, asking with her eyes.</p><p>And Felixi grumbled a thinking note, his gaze fleeing to the sky. Gratefulness held Rue; she couldn’t imagine explaining airsense any more than explaining the shapes of her bones and sinews.</p><p>“Aemet folk can … touch things,” Felixi decided. “Like you touch with your whiskers. Only … ah. Touching very far. That is airsense. ” He gestured brisk — whisker-shaped lines near his face; then twin arcs like aemet antennae; then broad, round motions with both arms. It didn’t suit a korvi’s long limbs, gesturing like that: the motions were rushed across swaths of air. He must have taught they-the-eight before, Rue grew sure. Felixi must have managed some patience.</p><p>Because the ferrin watched him and hummed satisfied notes. They adopted Felixi’s speech-motions and repeated them, shared them, discussed events using those and other shapes. It was so absorbing — their whirlwind of motion — that Rue nearly didn’t notice Felixi’s eyes hard on her.</p><p>She tried again, and hoped she wasn’t interrupting the wordless speech: “We— We can’t chase wolves away by ourselves. We need help. Korvi people, or … maybe ferrin people can help.”</p><p>“No …?” Chi asked. She lolloped a step away from her fellows, nearer to Rue, her ears falling with concern. “Can’t use your— your casting?”</p><p>“Aemet people can’t protect themselves,” Felixi said flatly.</p><p>That was true — and the truth did sting like a bee sometimes. Wincing, Rue added, “We have plantcasting. It’s not good for stopping wolves. It’s like … Making a plant— Here. I can show you.”</p><p>She was standing in a field with plants all around: she could explain all day and not make a point better than a simple grass seed could. Kneeling, Rue brushed at loose earth until a polegrass seed showed, a yellow husk split by the tentative beginnings of a plant. She cupped a hand over the sprout and sent plantcasting into it. Sharing the desire for growth, the sensation of unfurling and stretching roots downward; stalk upward; leaves out and open. The grass grew between Rue’s fingers with a crackling smaller than sound; she heard the ferrin’s curious gasps more clearly.</p><p>“We can grow food plants, and plants for elixer,” Rue told Chi — who hopped close now to examine the grass stalk with her sniffing nose. “But doing this won’t stop a wolf.”</p><p>“If you can’t do a thing, we can do it,” Chi said. She lit full of her own idea, looking to her wild clan. “We and Felixi, too!”</p><p>“We … fix,” another ferrin ventured, a pale grey fellow. He seemed like a reasonable sort, holding himself tall with a surety like tree wood. “When a thing is bad!”</p><p>Humming a sharp note, Chi nodded. She turned back to Rue, eyes wide and earnest, green as plantcasting’s light. “When we are hungry, we go and get food. And when a bad animal is close, we … we eh-lectrickcast. Find something bad, we … we can help.”</p><p>She got a chorus of agreement, her friends squeaking pleased. The grey ferrin and another one hopped to Chi and patted her shoulders — both ferrin close enough to Chi’s colouring that they looked like siblings, or cousins. The Dwo fellow wasn’t among them; he stood nearest to Felixi, ears wavering between flat angles.</p><p>These folk took action; that was the point nearly spoken aloud. Ferrin living wild didn’t have the luxury of thinking and stewing in a safe town refuge — not when they were small enough to be always mistaken for a prey animal. That must have made a person quicker to act, quicker to defend, faster to strike and sharper of tooth. How different from town ferrin — as different as dogs were from wolves.</p><p>And standing beside this reality was Felixi, who wasn’t looking at Rue anymore. He ought to find this pleasing, Rue thought — because didn’t anyone want their friends to be safe? Hadn’t he urged Rue to take action? Why would this solitary hunter decide to struggle through words with some wild ferrin, anypace? A cloud-wide sense filled Rue, some truth that she needed to know.</p><p>“Stopping wolves,” she wondered aloud. She considered Chi and the others, the ones forming a kind mob and sniffing at the edges of Rue’s clothing. “Have you ever stopped a wolf before?”</p><p>“We were dig for food,” the grey fellow said. “Pel,” and he touched his chest, “and Dwo. We find wolves.”</p><p>More likely that the wolves found them, Rue thought. She recalled the all-devouring need to flee, and imagined an electric-charged essence would change that feeling. She would feel less fear if her innate casting were able to strike outward.</p><p>“And you used your electricasting on the wolves?”</p><p>“Yes,” Pel said. He looked sturdy enough to stand his ground, with his chin lifted strong. “Felixi helped!”</p><p>“Did he,” Rue wondered. She cast a look to Felixi, who still glowered at the forest around them. But he hadn’t left. If he were tired of Rue — or tired of these many apparent friends he had — he had wings to fly away with.</p><p>Rue sensed the deep intake of air before Felixi spoke. She wanted to feel smoke or fire heat but there was none, only fangs in his voice:</p><p>“They managed fine on their own. Before … before this mountainside went sour. If the fire hadn’t caught them …”</p><p>“It caught them? I’m sorry to hear it.”</p><p>She looked at the ferrin with new eyes. Dwo with his bald-patched tail made sudden sense. And one of the others had asymmetrical ears, the left nipped off blunt by what could easily have been fire. Many of them had thin patches in their fur, their pink skin showing through like weak paint — particularly the old, wiry-furred ferrin sitting quiet as a stone. These wild ferrin hadn’t escaped the fire like Aloftway had. Maybe they couldn’t run quick enough.</p><p>“We-the-eight,” Chi said hesitant, “used to be more.”</p><p>Maybe, Rue thought with a stab of dread, their brave electricasting caught on dry forest leaves — and ran rampant without them. Fire and electricasting were near siblings, after all.</p><p>The land was a new place with these thoughts, while Rue knelt among wild friends and imagined tragedy wrapping them tight.</p><p>“Everything began after the fire, didn’t it? All the wolf attacks, all the strange bad fortune! And you …”</p><p>Felixi dropped his gold-feathered wings open, and picked up his payment of forage. “I’ve got work to do. Your creature won’t catch itself.”</p><p>“Wait,” Rue blurted. “We all have the same trouble, don’t we? We can’t live ordinary lives with these wolves acting like demons.”</p><p>She had the ferrin’s attention, eight pairs of ears standing alert. Felixi fixed a stare on Rue as sharp as his claws.</p><p>“If we help each other,” Rue pushed on, “we can make our home safe. I don’t know if this mountain is your home, exactly, but it’ll be a better place if we land folk can walk alone like we used to. Please, Felixi?”</p><p>He spat a sigh. He was anticipating more requests, Rue supposed. Growing sick of indulging her, but he wasn’t so hard-knuckled as he seemed.</p><p>“I aid these ferrin. I will not see them hurt any more. If they’re your allies, I’m your ally — but know that you’re near the end of my patience, Rue.”</p><p>“In all honesty,” she said before she could regret it, “I hate this, too, good Velgarro.”</p><p>He turned his face toward the ground, showing only the expanse of his nose but Rue could sense the uncertain twitch of his mouth underneath.</p><p>Rue went on, “I’m tired of asking for favours. That’s why I want to fix this. Not run from it, just fix it! You friends will help me, yes?”</p><p>Five ferrin squeaked their agreement, Chi and Pel and three others. They got looks from their fellows but the tilting ears all stayed lifted tall — perhaps hopeful, perhaps considering.</p><p>Felixi spat smoke, one thick mass of it. He crouched, leaped through his own grey residue and flapped away. It hurt, the fact of him leaving on a promise so tartly made. Rue wanted to murmur frustrated oaths but couldn’t imagine what she would do if she had to explain them to the curious ears at her side.</p><p>Another squeak burst from Chi, a <span class="u">chak-chak</span> sound she directed at the others. Moving all together, they-the-eight fell to four paws and lolloped closer, a tighter-gathering circle of friends. Air snuffled near Rue’s hands and she remembered herself, lifting them higher, turning them to offer open palms.</p><p>“I am Rue,” she said. Foolish to repeat herself, but she felt another need to say it.</p><p>She got an excited burst of names in return: Aka, Serri, she already knew Pel, Enn, of course she knew Chi, Zra, and the fragile-looking ferrin was Soh. Dwo hesitated and then spoke his name, too, in a breath that touched Rue’s palm. They all had just one name, she thought with a sinking sensation. Hadn’t Denelend said that ferrin got two names? Both their very own possessions? That was the way of town ferrin, likely enough, the ones with nimbler tongues. As much as it wasn’t an aemet’s place to think it, these folk hadn’t received their due.</p><p>“I am glad to meet you all. But … Felixi is gone. We need to go somewhere safe. You can all come to Aloftway village?”</p><p>With a flickering of gestures between them — ones like embraces and food put in mouths — they agreed. Even Dwo, whose expression was growing warmer.</p><p>Rue walked, leading the way, heading a procession of scurrying, leaping movement. Out of they-the-eight, seven ferrin seemed to prefer leaping branch to branch; only when the trees didn’t provide them enough pathways did they scrabble down a tree trunk to bounce brief along the ground. Soh lolloped alongside Rue, keeping steady pace. His whiskers vibrated with his constant, careful sniffing of the air.</p><p>“We need to bring things,” Chi told the others, adding gestures onto her words. As they travelled, the seven ferrin fanned wider through the canopy and began holding morsels careful in their mouths — vine shoots, nuts, one egg plucked from a bird’s ragged nest.</p><p>And watching them, Rue could imagine their life full of love. Their wild family, possibly one formed of friends as much as family; Rue still couldn’t peg down which ferrin were related or mated or any such thing. Their makeshift family seemed to have a korvi in it, too.</p><p>“When you want Felixi to come down from the sky,” she tried, “what do you do?”</p><p>Chi stopped in the fork of an oak branch, and removed three acorns from her mouth to speak. “We wave.” She demonstrated with her own arms — and the gesture looked a lot like what Rue had done that first time. “Only sometimes. More times, we stay and wait. He knows we need help … So he comes. He will help you! Felixi is … He—” Her expression squirming, Chi searched for words, and settled for tapping her thick-furred chest — where her heart and her electricasting essence were kept. “Is a friend.”</p><p>Rue smiled at the simplicity. “I hope he is.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0023"><h2>23. Chapter 23</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They arrived safe in Aloftway and neighbours gathered to meet they-the-eight, a cloud of motion like bees at a hive. Aloftway ferrin hopped to their wild kin’s sides and led them away in splintering groups, speaking with gestures added.</p><p>And Syril landed again in the street, with awkward-hugged branches of firewood that he had little to say about. His expression did loft somewhat as folk thanked him. There were hearth fires to cook barley with that night, and Denelend added they-the-eight’s foraged bits to a medley stewpot.</p><p>The next morning, Rue found a slug for Feor and practiced the <span class="u">attack</span> command with him, both events he seemed energetic enough to welcome. It kindled a joy in Rue, having this dear guardian by her side again. She headed back toward home and then Giosso approached — headed for the Tennel home, sure as a messenger with a forepaid duty.</p><p>“Good day, Rue,” he said. “Brenne would like everyone in the street half an hour from now. Or one person from each home, at least. Meet on the west side.”</p><p>Rue lifted her brows: she didn’t recall Brenne saying any such thing earlier. “Did she say why?”</p><p>“She did, but she’d like to keep it a surprise.” Giosso smiled, apologetic but stowing his delight away. “We hope to see your family there in particular, if it’s no trouble.”</p><p>Which was a peculiar request when Mother had already left the home under Judellie’s protection. Picking a few leaves, Mother said.</p><p>“No trouble,” she said.</p><p>Rue had a feeling murmuring in her bones. This gathering would involve goddess Verdana and some invoked hopes, some shared crumbs of blessings. But if Mother could muster her strength for hope-building events, then they were nothing to look down on.</p><p>Homemakers stood by farmers and leatherworkers, all discussing their gardens in low tones. The two children of Aloftway — tall and lanky, barely children anymore — stayed nearby. At the edge of gathering stood Judellie and Giosso, side by side, speaking too muted to hear but with the articulate mouth-motions of korvitongue. And korvi-skin red stood out stark in the green crowd: Syril stood merrily in the middle of the assembly, chattering a long tale to someone he had likely just met.</p><p>Mother's thin form appeared through the street air — coming from the Middling circle on a stride pushed steady as a heartbeat, Denelend lolloping just as steady behind her. She carried the narrow ovals of willow leaves in one hand. The gusting wind carried a shard of her voice: she hummed a hope song, and voices broke through the gathered crowd to join her.</p><p>Rue watched Elova Tennel pass through the crowd and find its center. The Tennel mother was a delicate remnant of herself but she had good left in her, a growing pool of her former strength. Brenne and Mara joined her sides; both had been standing so quiet that other villagers startled, stepping aside hurried for them pass.</p><p>"Good day, everyone," Mother said. She favoured Rue with a glance; there was an old spark in her eyes, the generous will that could make a place home. “And more good days upon us. The gods will make it be. And like a second coming, a second fall of pollen from the blessed petals, we will be blessed by Verdana.”</p><p>Standing not quite near enough to Brenne, Mara managed a smile, a watery attempt. Then she went back to watching her clasped hands — perhaps shutting Aloftway's stares out of her awareness, wishing for her safe corner of home.</p><p>With a glance to Mara, a habit more than a method, Brenne spoke. “The willow gracing our river is a sapling, a child even by our measure. But it has provided us with prayer leaves.” Brenne gestured to the green leaves fanned in Mother’s hand.</p><p>Few had the courage to go fetch water anymore; bringing back leaves of Verdana’s most hallowed tree was a gift that worried aemets could appreciate. Folk murmured pleased.</p><p>"Mara," Mother said with a smile, “your presence here lights the way. As our— Our friend of the village. And as part of this place’s heritage, a founder in times past. One of these leaves is for you. And there is a leaf for each home in this village still standing strong, with loved ones still living inside.”</p><p>Brenne, now the mage beyond any wisp of doubt, raised her palms to the sky. “I now ask for song, friends. Frightful as these times are, hunted by wolves, plagued by demons, we shall endure. As long as green strength fills us and air nourishes our bodies, we folk of Aloftway will live. Have faith, friends. Keep a seed in your hearts.”</p><p>A tingling feeling hung in that street air — joy, gratitude, the silence folk wore smiles in. Bodies stepped forward and hands lifted, taking one leaf each from Mother’s grasp. Rue could imagine how those leaves were picked: with Mother touching plantcasting to each wounded stem. Speaking kind words to the tree, too, as she might soothe Feor while removing a stone from his paw pads. Folk dispersed back to their standing places; a few faces crumpled, holding back their glad weeping.</p><p>Imagine this village willing to pick healthy leaves from a sacred tree, but not willing to muster their own energies. Growing a little courage couldn’t be so difficult, not even for an aemet: Rue had managed to figure out the basic ways of it.</p><p>"If I might ask," Rue said. Her voice was a stranger inside her, and all of Aloftway turned to listen to it. “We need more strength from outside the village. I’m sure every one of us can see that. And we’ve gotten a little extra strength of late, with our Reyardine visitor and now from wild ferrin joining us. But strength doesn’t need to be something we ask others to give us. It could be … simply a bit of foraging. Digging up a green plant and bringing it here, perhaps! Small steps.”</p><p>She couldn't imagine what had compelled her, speaking in such a magely way. But Rue felt Brenne’s face shift before she looked to the expression: gratitude, the wilting of someone relieved.</p><p>“That’s a fine idea,” Brenne told the village, “bringing back forest plants. If we go together into the forest — in groups, perhaps four or five together — we can bring back green sisters to care for.”</p><p>The thought tarred the air, while neighbours turned wide eyes to one another and exchanged whispers. Rue’s idea might not have been so reasonable in everyone’s eyes. The mountain forest, after all, grew fear.</p><p>Among those uneasy folk, Mother stood regarding Rue — with a smile like Father’s legacy grew before her eyes. Like her second daughter was a leader, too. Maybe an honoured mageling — and if not, then near enough.</p><p>“I think I can manage a few herbs,” one neighbour said.</p><p>“Yes,” another agreed.</p><p>More nodded, and agreements spread.</p><p>“Good,” Brenne said. “We’ll make a plan of it and head into the forest in an eightmoment. Does everyone have a willow leaf …?”</p><p>She was beckoning Rue nearer before the leaves were all distributed.</p><p>“Gods bless you, Rue,” Brenne murmured once she was near, “you and your swift mind. I think if we made groups of four aemet folk each, that should be enough strength and casting to bring back healthy food plants. And each group can have an otherkind friend to guard them?”</p><p>“They should have several. Dog, korvi or ferrin,” Rue agreed. “Don’t forget the small friends.”</p><p>Nodding, Brenne began tapping fingertips together in counting patterns. “Well, our new ferrin arrivals won’t count for this. I asked them to see about some medicine herbs. But we’ve still got plenty of hands to manage the work, I think. I counted forty aemetkind who said they would help, forty at least. Mmm. Let’s keep this lucky. Split everyone into eight large groups, send them in the four prime and four midprime directions. Northward folk will hit up against the cliffs but I think we could stand to grow dandelions nearer to home.”</p><p>“It’s best if we’re careful,” Mara said worried.</p><p>“My thought precisely,” Brenne told her.</p><p>This might work, said the fluttering in Rue’s heart. Maybe convincing aemets to have courage was only a matter of letting them have courage together. It wasn’t much to fend a hunting beast off with; they would still need otherkind aid. But it was something. How could Rue not be grateful for a chance, however small, however patchwork?</p><p>Brenne called folk to her — some of whom fussed under their clothes, tucking the willow leaves near their skin. The gathered neighbours split into careful-chosen groups. One of those groups coalesced around Rue.</p><p>“North-west,” Brenne said, gesturing the direction. “I see no reason to split up the family — Rue, you’ll have Denelend and Feor.”</p><p>Being assigned her own foraging territory felt like a riddle without an answer. But this was new to the neighbours at her sides, Rue supposed: she would guide the one millwright, one cobbler, two ropemakers and three farmhands, and show them all what she knew of courage. Those kin looked to the assigned guardians — Feor and small Denelend — as though stamping those faces into their minds.</p><p>The eight groups nodded brief to one another. Everyone passed supplies between hands: digging spades, water flasks, cloth rags and tattered former clothing.</p><p>Rue unrolled her map on the street dirt — seeing tinctor colours where everyone else must have seen simple black ink — and she made estimates. Her notes on Dariend’s foraging territory were sparse, and he stepped forward from the crowd to share estimates of his own. Everyone received a guess of how far they would walk before finding food plants.</p><p>“Now, walk swift and keep in your groups,” Brenne told everyone. “Let your feet fall loudly so you sound like more folk than you truly are. And do recall that not all of our guardians are involved in this task: our wild ferrin friends are setting up their home by the river. We’ve got more skilled friends than ever before.”</p><p>And that was all the command it took to get folk walking with Rue into the wilds. Rue turned her face north-westward and led the way. Nearly half of Aloftway dispersed into the forest, spreading outward like eight blooming petals.</p><p>It was a pleasant sensation at first, walking with such collective purpose. Here were Rue’s familiar surroundings but this time, the gathered movement of people stayed with her, immediate at her back. Other antennae parted the air; gusting breaths were a building weight of togetherness. It had been years since Rue walked in a single-minded group — years that suddenly seemed like a whole life already lived. She focused airsense on the otherkind shapes at her sides, Feor loping steady at one side, Denelend bounding a counterpoint.</p><p>“You must know exactly where to go,” came a friendly voice behind, “isn’t that right, Rue?”</p><p>“Yes,” she said.</p><p>“We’ve got some luck, getting into a group with her,” said someone else.</p><p>Pleased murmurs hummed. They itched at Rue’s insides, all the thoughts she had forgotten until they flared up livid. How could anyone — aemet or not — still think this was about luck?</p><p>Denelend’s ears shifted, rising and falling, his eyes drawn to Rue and her body speech. “Ah,” he said. “Maybe it would be a good idea if we sing? So the wolves will hear how many of us there are!”</p><p>He was complimented for his idea. Rue thanked him, too, with the silent, mountainous fondness inside her, and with a quirk of her mouth she knew Denelend would see.</p><p>After a moment’s discussion of which song would suit this venture best, the aemet neighbours behind Rue raised their voices together in a travelling song. It was a steady-humming tune — one that had always reminded Rue of a monotonously dusty road in some far-away prairie. She hummed her share of the tune. She focused mostly on her dog and ferrin companions, the way their ears pivoted toward the entirety around them.</p><p>Once they reached a healthy hazelnut bush taller than all of them, digging the plant up took a mere moment. One of the farmers wedged his fingers down into the soil and, with his green-glowing casting all but hidden underground, he convinced the hazel to release its rooted grip. With poured water and wrapped cloth, and many hands to share the carrying, they soon had a root-balled plant to bring back to the village.</p><p>There was less singing on the way back, and more talk of turning the bush this way or that. They finally neared the homes of Aloftway and tugged the hazel bush out into open street air. The farmers immediately tended the tree’s wounds, all the fresh-bared spots a leaf or a branch had torn away, while the others talked about fetching more water and deciding where this new food plant would be placed. Rue gave them all a smile she hoped was kind enough — for Denelend especially. Rue might have become a valuable hand to a mage but, gods, she was nothing like tactful Lavender. Not even a match for the rest of aemetkind's social grace, sensing a gap as she did, some form of faith she lacked. Maybe Mother knew that her middling daughter didn’t match. No, Mother must have known — and Rue couldn’t decide whether that was a relief or a stinging wound. She was a Tennel, but a Tennel headed down a path drawn by her own feet. None other.</p><p>She slipped her guard ring father down her hand, enough to hold juniper wood with her palm. Even if Rue Tennel never found her ideal place, she would always have tasks to see to. Feor nosed wetly at her hand; she patted her dog, the creature with enough faith for both of them. And then Rue headed for the folk at the center of everything: Brenne and Mara, with Judellie and Giosso standing sentinel by them.</p><p>“—Even if they’re bringing back a tree or something like it,” Giosso was fretting. “It’s still been a very long moment.”</p><p>Looks passed between Brenne and Mara. One of Brenne’s hands settled comforting on Mara’s shell.</p><p>“I could fly a wide circle,” Judellie said, “to find them?”</p><p>“Mmm. I suppose that wouldn’t hurt,” Brenne told her. “They might simply be having trouble carrying what they’ve found.”</p><p>Judellie stepped away without another word, to spring up into the sky. Wake washed downward, and Judellie sped northwestward over the trees toward another trouble.</p><p>Rue noticed late that she was following Judellie, drifting forward on slow steps. Trees blurred together in the airsensed distance and the combined mass was like an herb tincture, murky but plainly rich with content. It wasn’t only trees, not only leaves undulating in wind; something else was calling Rue’s attention. Feor stood by her side, eyes aimed open at the same distant presence. His fur lifted and one heartbeat later, voices filtered through the trees. Familiar voices sounded — and they were screaming.</p><p>The aemetkind throngs in the street reacted as one, tensing, standing there deer-eyed. Then some fled, handfuls at a time bolting away, peeling apart from their groups while Giosso hurried opposite them, toward the screams. He was a rush of yolk-orange, his claws held hooked, his wings tensing shut as he entered the trees.</p><p>“Feor,” Rue said hard, but commands stuck on her tongue. Would the <span class="u">attack</span> command work? Did the wolves need to be within eyesight? She asked herself whether Feor would understand her and her heart shrank in response, shrank into the aemet fear moaning like a storm in her. Her fist knotted around the guard ring. Feor stood hackled and ready but Rue was transfixed by the stirring movements at the farthest reaches of her airsense and she didn’t know how to use the <span class="u">attack</span> command at all. Maybe, said a reedy thought, she should use her fire stone instead.</p><p>Aemets appeared, running toward town safety, their faces blanched terrified. Each passed Rue and Feor by, a rush of air and dust-churning shoes.</p><p>A group was no defense, Rue thought with syrup-thick clarity. The northwestward group had been seven folk plus one dog, and fewer than that had fled home — only the aemets, not their saviours.</p><p>Giosso returned as the panic was settling into plain horror. He held a ferrin friend, Rinner, in his red-flecked arms.</p><p>“What happened,” Brenne said breathless. She hurried to Giosso, her outspread hands glowing white.</p><p>“A bunch of wolves,” said Rinner. Rue saw him rarely, and mostly imagined him at Shika’s side waiting to meet Felixi — but he was wild-eyed with fear today. He held his own wet, matted arm, and let go of it to wave Brenne away with a red-stained paw. “No, save it for Shika!”</p><p>“A wolf grabbed Shika and shook her,” Giosso murmured. “It looks— Hurry.”</p><p>“Of course. I—” and Brenne quailed in the heartbeat it took her to look into the murky forest. She paused, the pause airsense took hold in. “Rue? Come with me. Bring your dog.”</p><p>Good, Rue thought. Borrow courage, if that was where courage needed to come from. She went to Brenne’s side but still couldn’t manage to speak as they headed toward a new awful scene.</p><p>Their friends were easy to find, as fear-hot bodies among cool leaves. The dog, Feor’s brother, laid shaking but steady; Judellie held him in place by a fistful of collar rope. And her mantled wings, all her red-fanned feathers, sheltered Shika — who was damp all over and breathing rapid, barely nudging air.</p><p>Brenne rounded Judellie and dropped to her knees, gasping her fright even as she applied her hands to furred chest. White light pierced through Judellie’s quills, light that made the dog recoil and shuffle back. Healing magic touched the air, a sensation like a cousin of warmth and motion. And fear gripped Rue but compelled her to move, to step over and see past Judellie’s feathers.</p><p>Shika had glass eyes. She tried to speak but precious little air moved, a seeping from her mouth. Then Shika only stared; there was no more breathing, no more vibration of a beating heart.</p><p>Brenne let her brightcasting fade, let the forest shadow wash back in. She withdrew her hands and bowed her head. “High Ones, if I had another moment with her …”</p><p>Laying her free hand on Brenne, Judellie said low, “I am surprised she held on that long.” She turned a brief look to Rue — sympathetic, although Rue had barely known Shika at all. Only by her rumoured deeds. Only as the other person brave enough to wave Felixi of Velgarro down from the sky — and now she had paid for her trait of bravery.</p><p>Brenne lifted her gaze to Judellie, focusing now. “What happened here?”</p><p>“You … you should see to this fellow. While I tell you.”</p><p>Nodding, hurrying to shuffle her weight nearer to the dog, Brenne poised her hands. After a tight-focused moment, her healing emerged this time as darkcasting, shining quiet as midnight.</p><p>“The wolves were gathering closer when I got here,” Judellie spat. “Tightening a circle on the northwestward party — I could see a blur in the trees, from darkcasting. So I dropped down and blew smoke. That ought to put the fear of death in them, but …” Frustration pinched Judellie’s mouth, a stifled snarl twitching along the length of her snout as she shook her head. “They did not care about me! They attacked us anyway!”</p><p>“Even through smoke?” Rue blurted.</p><p>“Plenty of it! They still kept their eyes on the aemets! Our other friends would not have escaped if Shika was not in the way — she tried to bite the wolf back! ”</p><p>“Gods around,” Brenne murmured. Done with the dog’s few punctures, she gathered Shika’s body into her arms, a limp form like a stuffed toy. “They’re even losing their fear of korvi.”</p><p>“We have to do something,” Judellie said. She tensed claws in the fallen leaves. <span class="u">Tell me to strike at them, tell me to drop onto their heads</span>, she was thinking: Rue could nearly sense the shape of those words.</p><p>Brenne’s mouth thinned into a line, while she arranged her tunic’s edge covering Shika’s face. She shook her head “I’ll test the air around everyone’s heads when we go back. See how much fear we've got gathered. I’m sure if I called exodus, no one would argue.”</p><p>No, Rue thought with a flare burst inside her. She herself would argue. And judging by the knitting of Judellie’s brow, Rue wouldn’t argue alone.</p><p>Kivia Shika, call her Shika, received a brief funeral as far into the southeastern oak grove as Aloftway dared to walk. The twenty-second day of the month was supposed to grant her a bluetop flower but none grew within a day’s walk anymore. Shika received a mint flower instead, and a dandelion for luck. Plenty of hands helped to pile leaf litter over her shroud, and top it with enough stones to protect her remains. Everyone still shook, permeated by the events barely over. Rinner stood with a tight cluster of other ferrin, staring at at the mound and its finality of being.</p><p>“Gods watch her,” Brenne finished. In the open, leaden air, she ran her motherly eyes over every face before her. She looked pale as wax but her voice continued ringing sure. “Friends. Our troubles are only growing. Aloftway needs to make a choice now.”</p><p>“Exodus,” came a voice. “It’s the only sensible decision!”</p><p>Murmurs supported it.</p><p>“We should have fled months ago,” another said — lower, shaking.</p><p>Aemets didn't run toward problems. They never seemed to, in all the legends ever told to Rue. Aemets followed the winds away from trouble. The folk surrounding Rue had no plans to change that; they would smile and work only as long as nothing cracked their varnished layer of serenity.</p><p>“But,” Rue said. It was a word summing up everything inside her, the contrasting colours she had lived all these years. “It’s one pack of wolves. Felixi the hunter has seen as much. He knows the beasts’ movements. Just a few wolves!”</p><p>Her voice was thunder in this frightened quiet. The gathered villagers stared at one another, all fear-shining eyes like pigeons in a cramped cage. Rue had to speak now if she planned to; all the sense and rationality in the land wouldn’t help if she kept it pent inside her head. She threw a hand toward the forest, toward the wind and shade.</p><p>“Imagine if— Imagine that our problem is just some wolves acting as they shouldn’t. That simple. There might be demons out here. We don’t know. There might be any measure of the gods’ will at work here, but we can’t guess that and we’re wasting our time if we try. What we <span class="u">do</span> know is that a pack of wolves is acting as they shouldn’t — that’s the trouble we can fix. Or should a few dogkind wipe an entire village out of being?”</p><p>A pause answered Rue, the sound of hesitation.</p><p>“Senford would not want us to give up,” Judellie said. Fire and accent turned her words to blades; her eyes were banked coals. “He risked his safety walking here alone, he did that <span class="u">dozens</span> of times before we moved in. He told me his way of carrying so many house boards at once. He was even here planting nettles, with no one to guard him!”</p><p>The thought of Senford Wennering seemed to reverberate, a memory washing over everyone present and bringing murmurs to their throats.</p><p>“The fields are holding more wholesomeness now,” said one fellow ventured. He was a farmhand, one of the ones who had asked Rue to swirl the earth with tinctor dye. Now, he turned questioning eyes to his neighbours. “I’ve spent plenty of hours turning fertilizer under. Don’t want to leave so much work behind …”</p><p>“You’d trade that for your life?” came a sharp answer.</p><p>Holding up a hand, a homemaker added, “Once the slugs have run their course, and once the forest has recovered from the fire demon, things can only improve. There will be more food for all of us, then!”</p><p>Muttering broke out, fracturing one village debate into untold smaller ones. Rue looked to Brenne — who stared, listening to all of her villagers speaking raw inner thoughts. She met Rue’s eyes.</p><p>“Let me ask Felixi,” Rue said hushed. “I’ll ask him plainly if there’s anything we can do to protect ourselves, using the folk we’ve got among us right this moment. Felixi knows other hunters’ minds. He’ll have an answer and I’m sure he’ll give it to me. Please.”</p><p>“I’ll think on this tonight,” Brenne agreed. Louder, for everyone’s ears, she said, “Friends. Myself, Mara, and Rue will search for some way to hold onto Aloftway. Just have courage until tomorrow morning. No longer than that — we’ll give you an answer in the first bright hours. Keep safe until then.”</p><p>And how could folk be safe in strange times like these? Aemet villagers stared and nodded tense; ferrin ears fell as they sensed the subtle lies.</p><p>As everyone drifted back toward town, Rue approached Brenne.</p><p>“Tomorrow morning …?”</p><p>Brenne nodded. “Not at first bright. Maybe third hour or so. Gods help you, Rue — or Felixi help you, or someone with a heart.”</p><p>Rue hoped the very same; she turned away, under the weight of the entire forest. And Mara stood there near Brenne, drifting as though hoping for a conversation, her gaze fogged and unreadable. She had been there yet again at a town gathering, at the back. Simply a silent presence drawing occasional kind touches to her shell from folk who used to call her mage, folk she used to inspire.</p><p>"It doesn't stop," Mara said, “does it?"</p><p>Rue stopped. “I'm … I’m not one to answer that.”</p><p>“There’s … there’s such a great deal to handle,” she murmured, “when tending to a village. I’m so sorry. For all of this. I … I chose you well, Rue.”</p><p>And her face collapsed, like her last spark of will was spent, like she couldn’t reach out of herself any longer.</p><p>“Come on,” Brenne told her, kind as always. “Let’s get you your tea, Mara.” Arm around Mara’s shell, Brenne led her, always the rope tying shelter into place.</p><p>There was no time for learning new castings, no more days to spend wondering if korvi friends would arrive. Rue had one chance to right this floundering place and with a command to Feor, she began walking, searching upward with her sense. She needed Felixi and gods only knew where he was above these smothering maple trees.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0024"><h2>24. Chapter 24</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>If Felixi knew the passion-quick whims of they-the-eight, he knew they were settling in Aloftway at this moment. Leaving them with Rue was the kindest damnation he could have committed. They wouldn’t leave this mountain if they had earthbound friends.</p><p>Which was why Felixi found himself drifting airborne with a pouch full of smoke-dried wolf meat. Drifting a circuit around Aloftway’s outskirt, supposing that the various guard creatures in Aloftway needed food strength as much as Felixi did, but he would rather be thunderstricken from the sky than make the choice to land in a street full of staring eyes.</p><p>The trinity of peoplekinds had an infuriating way of snaring folk in each other’s needs. If it wasn’t someone needing a korvi’s flight speed, it was someone asking for spat fire, or strong arms for lifting. Someone able to heft a full crate or push a hand plough. But what business did korvi have pushing a hand plough, anypace? They plainly weren’t made with farms in mind.</p><p>If Felixi focused his mind and his magic, he might make a few plants grow on this mountainside. Gather back the skills he had tossed onto the ground. Scratch them up from the dirt with his claws, dust them off, push the stares of folk back into his thoughts and act as though he didn’t mind, didn’t feel their wary attention soaking into his back feathers like ink staining—</p><p>Well, banish them anypace, Felixi thought. Hunting was a necessary task. Just see how the land would function without it. Deer and nurls eating themselves to starvation, and a heap of strain on farming folk as they tried to feed everyone. And predator creatures shattering the nature order to survive. The wretchedly unfortunate region of Surgings mountain was proving well enough how important a balance was. And if folk thought Felixi ought to hold his temper and stay his claws, and eat only meals of bark and roots, then they had a legend to hear. A legend of old times where hunting korvi were the only korvi. All Felixi needed to do was spin a story that would cause all the ways and cultures in the land to make a same flavour of sense. Damn it all.</p><p>He was fussing again, like trying to make a square-edged pile out of loose straw. After so many years, Felixi ought to have buried those thoughts. Banking on a stone-hard current of air, Felixi scanned the forest patchwork. Aemets walked in eight groups, all scattered to the winds and returning like uneven strands of some effort-tied knot. Felixi shunted his eyes away from them. He might approach a small group — since that was better than making Rue’s dog wait and go hungry.</p><p>But a branch-shaking motion hooked his attention. A white ferrin leaped, followed by a grey one with a bald-pinched shape to his tail. What convenience that he found Dwo and Chi on one of their foraging journeys, just they two in the wilds like they hadn’t bound themselves to a town.</p><p>Felixi dropped into a stony-floored clearing, startling the dear friends so they sparked with electricasting. Stupid of Felixi to think they could hear a greeting bark over so much skywind.</p><p>“Sorry,” he said. There wasn’t much more to add; Felixi dipped his neck low so his mane feathers laid at a drooping angle, a poor mimic of the ears korvi didn’t have sticking fleshy out of their heads.</p><p>“Felixi,” Chi said kind. Like he was forgiven simply for being a known friend. Dwo twitched his back fur but kept his ears high.</p><p>“At any pace, hello,” Felixi set about saying. “You-the-eight live in Aloftway now …?”</p><p>Eagerly chirping, Chi nodded, and she walked farther along a bowing viburna branch toward him. “We can be a big family. Everyone can help.”</p><p>That sealed it. No more feinting around the matter. Felixi would be dragged into Aloftway’s fold simply for caring about some joy-eyed friends — which he thoroughly did. Blowing smoke, and catching Dwo’s dubious ear motions in the corner of his vision, Felixi held out his pouch of meat. Cleaned thoroughly and sliced thin as parchment, dried nearly into jerky with a night’s worth of smoky hearth heat. Ordinary except for the animal it came from, an animal that had fed Felixi perfectly well but might bring horrors to the minds of the wolf-menaced.</p><p>“This is for Aloftway. Please bring it to them. Give it to Rue, or her closest family.”</p><p>Gaze melting, Chi shuffled as near as she could. Felixi went to her and held the pouch straight up, into her grasp, waiting for her to test the heft and drag it upward.</p><p>“Can you carry that?”</p><p>“Yes. We can share carrying.” Two clicks of a pause while she sniffed through the sackcloth. “This is … meat?”</p><p>“It is. Rue’s mother needs it. Ask for—” Banish it, what was the aemet woman’s name. Felixi always imagined her bundled in blankets, fussing over tea herbs. “—Elova. Her name is Elova. I have to go, be safe, friends.”</p><p>They two waved him off, maybe guessing at the awful trick he had just played. Meat wasn’t just meat; it was always from somewhere, always the result of a price paid. But no one would ask hard-knuckled questions of a wild ferrin. They surely couldn’t be expected to answer in clear enough words. If his lying was a sin, well, Felixi couldn’t fly forever; he would face the Legend hound’s judgement at some time or another.</p><p>Back in the sky, Felixi felt full of stones but he needed to keep watch: he had promised Rue that he would. A wind current pushed — like a friend nudging in a kinder direction — Felixi followed it, and found himself swooping over the mountain’s oddest valley. The one full of dandelions, where he had to breathe through locked teeth or else choke on tufted seeds. The cliff faces held lichens of all colours but mostly the lumpy, grey kind. And above that was a hole big enough for a korvi to land — only just, if Felixi timed his wingbeats careful. It called out from the cliffside and Felixi flapped through the wind to get there.</p><p>The hole was a smooth-polished tunnel through the mountainside, where the chaos wind had dug itself a thoroughfare. A loud place, with the moaning wind for company, but with plenty of room for Felixi to perch, plenty of space above the curves of his horns. There was a legend about the winds encircling mountaintops. Some old tale Felixi must have heard when he was still small and downy-backed. The wind had wandered since the Greatbloom first cast life across the land, and however broad its search, the wind never found a truer friend than the chill peaks of the mountains. Maybe there had been more to the story than that: Felixi couldn’t recall, not with guilt still jangling inside him.</p><p>But a scant furlong away, through the shifting mosaic of forest leaves, he could see a building. A brown-striped wall made of aemet house boards — Felixi couldn’t forget that sort of structure if he tried. He could watch a sliver of Aloftway, maybe spot his wild friends who were a shade less wild now, maybe sight a wolf that thought itself invisible. That had to count for a whit. Watching over folk.</p><p>With a little luck, Rue Tennel might even find him here.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0025"><h2>25. Chapter 25</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They couldn't go on this way, retreating into their homes at the first fell trace of wind, wringing meals from garden soil. This was no home for family legacies to grow in — and it would never be a home if everyone threw Father’s vision away.</p><p>Rue needed to be searching for Felixi in this moment. Instead, she stopped in the dusty centre of the village street and lingered there full of restlessness, looking over at the north-western trees. Her innards knew this was no time to go stand in an open field. Even if she survived doing it, she would send another pulse of fear through Aloftway, knowing that their lucky Rue had wandered away.</p><p>And Rue was not going to ask Judellie or Giosso for more attention. She was <span class="u">not</span> going to lean on the same rickety plans as ever. She could sight Felixi without straying far — likely even wave him down, if korvi eyesight was as excellent as folk said — if she only had a vantage point.</p><p>The dandelion valley would work, she knew with mounting courage. She had only ever climbed high enough to pick a few knuckles of tinctoria, but there had looked to be crevices and footholds stretching upward. Up into the chaos winds, a veritable storm but certainly a visible place to stand.</p><p>Syril of Reyardine came walking in from the forest — carrying more snapped-off wood, looking like he held a raw puckerapple in his mouth.</p><p>“Pardon me, good Reyardine,” Rue said.</p><p>He stopped sudden before her, throwing on a hasty smile. “Yes, Rue? If you’d like wood, I’m afraid this will be the last I carry in today. This shady forest and my constitution are not exceptionally fine dancers together.”</p><p>“Hmm? No, I don’t need wood. But if you bring this beast of mine to the Tennel home, I’d appreciate it greatly.”</p><p>“Appreciate it?” The word lit Syril like a candle in a dark room. “I could very well bring him, I’m sure!” Hiking the wood bundle onto his hip, Syril tipped his head at the wagging-tailed, pleasant-smiling Feor. “Ah. He is friendly, isn’t he? Doesn’t bite or any such dreadfulness?”</p><p>“There’s nothing dreadful about him,” Rue promised. Tugging open the drawstrings, she pulled off her guard ring and hung it over one of Syril’s clawed fingers. “He follows that bangle. Just give it to Elova Tennel. You’re going straight there, right?”</p><p>Staring at the trinket — whose polished surfaces must have held appeal for merchant folk — Syril said, “Yes. Yes, of course! Well now, let’s be hasty, dog!”</p><p>Quite a wordy excuse for a dog command, but Feor followed the Reyardine anyway; he looked back reluctant at Rue. She was already on the leg, headed for the cliff her guard dog couldn’t climb.</p><p>Saw-toothed leaves split the air currents — dandelion leaves standing openly against the air, a sparse few of them compared to the riot of leaves Rue remembered. If Rue stepped on any one leaf, she might well be treading on someone’s meal. She shooed drifting seeds away from her eyes, hopped across bare rocks and reached the cliffside, the shape standing solid against turbulent air. She placed her hands on the rocks, set her fingernails and booted toes into crannies, and she began stepping upward.</p><p>Knobby branches of tinctoria passed by, and flat fettlewort, and wire-slender strands of cerulas. Then the rock was barren. Rue grasped at cool raggedness and moved on tensed limbs. The air clamoured around her, whipping her antennae in bent circles, gusting away sensation.</p><p>The land was blurred paint around her, vague shapes in her airsense and a churning in her stomach. But there was a shape above her. A broad shape like a perching korvi, a beacon through the chaos. Someone who could flap up here like a drifting spark. Rue didn’t dare hope she had found Felixi so easily, but who else would sit calm in this mountain’s gale winds?</p><p>Rue kept pulling upward. Her limbs burned; her antennae battered against her head and tightness gripped her throat. Pulling herself up onto the ledge — barely seeing a yellow shape before her — Rue laid gasping. She took one antennae in each hand, shutting out the worst of it. The pressure of her own grasp made her innards but they settled, and the spinning slowed with each breath.</p><p>“Rue,” came Felixi’s voice — soft as a chill rain. “What are you …?”</p><p>“Need your help.”</p><p>He didn’t answer. With an especially large breath drawn in and pushed out, Rue gathered strength. She shifted upright to sit. It was an awkward motion with both hands around her antennae, but she thanked whatever impulse told her to subdue her own senses.</p><p>“Would— Would you come down? So we can talk?”</p><p>There was no airshape but the inside of Rue’s hands. Only eyesight showed her Felixi’s motions, the precise flicking of his gaze as he considered Rue. She must have looked as storm-tossed as she felt.</p><p>“For you, I suppose,” he decided.</p><p>A stickiness gathered between them — from Rue wondering if she could climb back or if she would need a winged aide, and Felixi likely wondering the same. She wanted to ask for that favour; sensation still jangled against her nerves and the words were ready in her mouth. But she came to ask a favour of Felixi already. She shouldn’t have needed to make such fearful bargains — but did Felixi owe her aid simply because he was born with wings? No, Rue thought. She could manage the climb down — and hopefully not faint once she reached the valley floor.</p><p>After another reluctant moment, she released her antennae. She pushed one foot backward, shoe toe finding the edge of the cliff. This was the same as walking out into the forest when fear hung miasmic; this was a task that would surely be easier if she didn’t even consider quitting.</p><p>Rue barely recalled climbing back down. She slipped backward over the edge; she minded her feet, touching shoe soles to sure surfaces. Air was an endless chaos around her and her limbs burned weak, and her innards sloshed. After a broad time she was crushing a dandelion stalk under her grasping hand and hoping for forgiveness, because she couldn’t even begin to cast right now.</p><p>Rue left her hands against the cliffside, standing bent among this lesser wind. She moved to grip her antennae after a moment, after the spots in her vision continued to grow.</p><p>“I could have flown you down,” Felixi said. He stood a stone’s throw away, arms folded, tail flicking serpentine as he regarded Rue.</p><p>“I’ll keep it in mind. For next time.”</p><p>“You’re not thick enough to try that again.”</p><p>How generous Felixi was today, said a light thought swimming through Rue’s head. Complimenting Rue’s character.</p><p>“Geh … No. I only climb high enough for lichen, usually. And only for a moment.”</p><p>Quiet gathered. Only the wind whistling and the leaves muttering.</p><p>“Well, then,” Felixi said, “what is so important that you climbed higher?”</p><p>Rue couldn’t remember for a panicking moment — like the wind had blown away that memory. “I … The village. W-We can’t stay here.”</p><p>“If the fierce winds bother your kind so much,” he said, “why did you <span class="u">come</span> this far up the mountain?”</p><p>“Don’t know.” She swallowed thickly, and tried, “Ambition, I suppose. Faith. Nothing sensible. And these damnably lucky dandelions.”</p><p>“Ah.”</p><p>Another two breaths and Rue’s senses settled. Warped paths of air jostled overhead, same as usual for this valley; coiling eddies held hundreds of pinpoint seeds. And Felixi’s breathing flowed steady in and out of his chest.</p><p>“My father," Rue added. “He saw the dandelion seeds flying.” She wiped clammy palms on her leggings. She straightened. “That was what really made him pick this wretched place, as far as I’ve been told. Dandelions mean freedom for our kind.”</p><p>“Yes,” Felixi said mild.</p><p>Like he knew plants, too. Questions jostled at Rue. It was never simple, talking to this fellow she trusted like an aching bruise. “So? What made you sit up there?”</p><p>“I sit on cliffsides,” he said. One eye flicked to Rue. “It’s part of the pleasure of having wings. And … I was hoping to see how our small friends are faring. They joined Aloftway, I presume?”</p><p>“They’re settling into a tree. By the creek. They’re safe for the moment, but …”</p><p>This couldn’t go on. Their mad dance of bargains, the fragile balance of Aloftway life. Frustration gave Rue courage.</p><p>“Felixi, we’re not safe. I came to ask you what we should do, because we’ve got no more ideas. Wolves attacked a group of folk today. Eight of them together, aemet and ferrin and a dog, and the wolves came right at them. One of the ferrin lost her life.”</p><p>He stared at Rue now, open as a lake’s surface.</p><p>“Not one of our wild friends,” Rue said. What an oily sensation, specifying who died. As though some lives were more valuable.</p><p>Felixi shifted, looking at his toeclaws against rock. “The wolves— They were bold about it? Fearless?”</p><p>“I wasn’t there, but it sounds as though they were. They didn’t even shy from a korvi’s smoke, our guards aren’t even dampening their courage anymore! If we could— If we could only protect ourselves," Rue spat. She raked a hand into her braid-tight hair. “Not with dogs, not with guards. I mean actually protecting ourselves with our own strengths.”</p><p>Felixi was quiet, his feathers ruffled. He regarded the sky. “Would you strike with your own hands, Rue? If you had to defend yourself?”</p><p>Blaze beryl weighed in her pocket, and this time Rue could feel no guilt about it. “I think so. I don’t know.” She imagined herself wielding firecasting, pushing her hands to a fierce purpose. Imagination wasn’t worth a handful of acorns. She couldn’t put a value on her skills anymore, not when the land was so confused.</p><p>“Striking with claws isn’t how your kind does things," Felixi said — not a question at all. He shifted, wrapping his arms tight around himself. “Going on with your plants and fiddling with soil. Not much of a way to protect yourselves. Not if the trade deals fail you.”</p><p>It had all been such a gamble. Rue had been right to think that, even when she was small, even when she could only sense a whiff of the situation. She nodded. “And plants aren’t much good for strong defence.”</p><p>“Unless we drop a tree on your attackers, I suppose.”</p><p>They couldn't possibly. Unrooting a living tree was a sin too huge to be spoken, one that would push Aloftway folk over a brink of qualms and terror. But the thought of trees lit a spark in Rue's head; she wouldn’t have thought of using a tree’s bulk as a weapon. What else hadn’t she considered?</p><p>"Defending wouldn't necessarily need anyone to attack,” she mused, “would it?"</p><p>Felixi left his gaze on the sky. “No, Rue. That's why it's called defending, as opposed to calling it attacking. Would you prefer it in korvitongue?”</p><p>"You thick-headed— I mean warding creatures away, instead of waiting until they attack in the first place. Making them think twice about coming near. Making them reconsider whether the prey is worth the trouble. You know, in the same way you blow smoke to prevent wolves from coming near!”</p><p>He blinked, as though something had snapped into place in his mind, too. “That’s sensible enough. It’s … more or less how ferrin protect themselves. Creatures know that a ferrin is small, but still full of electricasting and teeth — that's enough to ward away everything but the starving and the foolhardy.”</p><p>“Whereas all we’ve got is our presence in groups … The legends say that’ll protect us.” Rue huffed, tasting all her own filmy doubts built up over the years. “If standing about in groups is all we have to offer the wild ferrin— We’ll just have to do better.”</p><p>“You’re not using them to shield yourselves.” Felixi’s tone was both a command and a fragile hope; his gaze fixed on Rue was as heavy as fallen wood.</p><p>“They’ll be treated like Aloftway’s own, that’s a promise. Everyone thinks they’re delightful friends.”</p><p>And Rue would watch over them like she watched over the village itself — by trying to mend the wrongs all around it, the troubles dug into their pathway soil. She knew she ought to speak it but it seemed unnecessary, a statement of what they both knew; Felixi was regarding the clouds again, his plumage sleek against his back. And he spoke:</p><p>“So if you’d like every aemet making themselves useful in defence, you’ll need to use your kind’s basic plantcasting. How would plants make a defence? It’d just be a matter of using the right plants.”</p><p>"Not a tree. What about … brambles! So the thorns would make hunting creatures think twice!” Like the walls of broodery, the safe walls Rue remembered in her teaching memories. Like the brambles Mother had been growing broader already. Rue put her hands to her mouth: the ideas swarmed in now. “If we grow thorned plants thickly enough, we could make walls around the entire village!”</p><p>“Wolves can jump. You could grow plants tall enough, couldn’t you?”</p><p>“Oh, easily, if we wind vines around tree trunks, perhaps add some spiny plum.” It would be an all-protecting fence made of Verdana's fellow children. No aemet could argue that they couldn’t help that effort. “We’ll build a broodery, but large enough to hold everyone, not just some children.”</p><p>Felixi smiled, a lopsided twist of his mouth. It was the most real motion Rue had ever seen on him, a sliver of truth that creased the edges of his eyes. “Not a bad thought. But can you make it fly?”</p><p>"We haven't got a choice.”</p><p>“Get everyone working at it. Especially the ones too fearful to forage their own food.”</p><p>She nodded. Farm work was an easy request to make, something as basic to aemetkind as their shells and their bones. “Leaving the village will be difficult if we’re fully walled in, but right now, I’d say that’s a blessing.”</p><p>“Your korvi allies will still be able to fly in and out.”</p><p>“Straight vertically, yes.” Rue dropped to her knees, pulling out her map parchment. She sketched in an unused corner, curved lines like the ones burning bright inside her head. “We can make the walls lean inward, like a— A dome! We’ll leave an opening wide enough for korvi wings to pass freely. Can all korvi manage to fly straight upward like that, if you should need to take off …?”</p><p>Felixi nodded. “It's just a strong jump and some sure wingbeats. Anyone but a new fledgeling should be able to manage.”</p><p>“And ferrin could come and go by climbing? If we leave a few places free of thorns?”</p><p>“They climb better than any other.” A change came over Felixi, a twitching of his feathers like he was rearranging everything about himself, including shuffling his thoughts. “Now that I think on it... This might work. Now, why can’t more aemets follow your guide?”</p><p>A smile lit Rue from within. She couldn’t have agreed more, sitting there on a mountainside she knew like a home.</p><p>Blowing a puff of smoke, Felixi went on, “I always see the wolves running along flat planes, avoiding steep patches. Begin your wall from the west and east. Maybe they won’t be so gutstrong when they’re forced onto strange turf.”</p><p>Rue lifted her parchment to the wind currents, coaxing moisture into the air and away; the last thing she wanted was to smear her sketched plan beyond recognition. “We’ll at least have some space to breathe, if this works. And time to figure out which steps to take. There’s only one trouble: it’ll take a lot of our strength to grow so many plants and grow them so tall. Everyone will be exhausted when it's finished, and our food stores will surely be gone. We’ll need protection, and not just from the few korvi folk we have among us now. Every dog and every person....”</p><p>"I'll watch," Felixi spat. “I'll mind the ferrin and see that they don't get hurt.”</p><p>He would watch aemetkind, too, Rue thought with a tendril of hope. Felixi wasn’t so stony; he could be swayed. But her gut still shifted restless and she recalled strangeness in the air, an oddity in the way Felixi carried himself while other people’s eyes laid on him.</p><p>"We'll fix this," Rue said. “I'm sure there's a way to fix this. I only ask a bit of trust from you, Felixi, long enough to see this through. And if there's anything I can do to protect the ferrin as Aloftway's own, well... Be assured that I'll do it. All of us will.”</p><p>He ran gaze over her, considering, turning over stones in that deep mind of his. “Fair enough. You’ll need seeds and trimmings to grow, won’t you? So you have enough thorny things?”</p><p>“Yes.” Rue hesitated. If Felixi had known about lucky dandelions, he might well know more aemet ways. She asked, “You know how to take a plant cutting …?”</p><p>“Cutting things is what I do,” he said dry.</p><p>She raised a brow at him. “You cut it slantways. At a deep angle. With—”</p><p>“Rue, I know.”</p><p>She regretted speaking at all; she nodded. “If you can’t find thorny plants, then anything vine-shaped, or thickly branched enough to make a wall. Thank you. We’ll try, I’ll make sure!”</p><p>Without any further hesitation, Felixi took off, a sudden storm of air that brought the sick feeling gushing back. Rue grabbed at her antennae, hoping it would pass, loathing her ability to sense. And after a moment, the air settled and was still, as though Felixi of Velgarro had never been present.</p><p>Rue turned back toward home, tired but accomplished. They had a shape in mind, a plan to finally follow. She would ask Brenne to borrow a little mint — which soothed upturned stomachs, if Rue remembered correctly — and then Aloftway would begin work on a green-woven wall to protect folk of all kinds. This would work, said a very real gleam of hope.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0026"><h2>26. Chapter 26</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In the time it took to boil water for tea, Rue repeated her plan to Brenne. She opened her map and sketched her drawing larger into the mage home’s floor, every scrape of the twig looking more hopeful than the last. By the time steam poured upward from cups, Brenne stared thoughtful, still as if she might disturb her own thoughts and make them bolt.</p><p>“Like a broodery,” she murmured, echoing Rue. “If it’s fit for our smallest children, I should think it’ll work for us.”</p><p>She spared a glance for Mara — Mara sitting blanket-wrapped in the corner, like she was fragile. Mother had never been so fragile. Even in the hours after giving birth to Avens, when she was pale and bloodless as a mushroom, Mother had been aware and present among them. But Mara only stared past the boards, into some place of stillness.</p><p>Brenne fetched a cup of mint tea for Rue. Bending to place the cup in Rue’s hands, she said in a gossip whisper, “Mara hasn’t spoken a word today. I could hardly get her to take tea. All these weighty thoughts have been simply too much for her …”</p><p>“It’s best if she stays here,” Rue said. “This will frighten all of us. If she’s already stunned …” The deftness of Mara’s casting skill would have been a boon, but Aloftway didn’t appear to have a choice in the matter.</p><p>Brenne nodded. “Well, we’ll just need to be safe. I’ll ask the wild ferrin to look for seeds and sprouts. They’ll be the sharpest at it, I’m sure. And everyone else can move green sisters around. When you’re ready, Rue, if you would help us figure where the wall should be placed?”</p><p>“I’ll only need a moment.” She inhaled minted steam from her cup. “Felixi is flying for cuttings, too. Tell the ferrin to watch the sky for him — he might give them some cuttings to be brought back to us.”</p><p>“And we’ll appreciate the help,” Brenne said. She smiled, small and secret. “Thank you, Rue. I don’t know how you do it.”</p><p>She bustled briefly at storage boxes, selecting pouches with small seed-shapes inside, tucking Mara’s teaching parchments under her arm. They-the-eight would see the same instruction drawings Rue had. In Brenne’s wake, Rue sat with her mint remedy, alone with the steam and Mara’s silence. She didn’t need her stomach settled anymore; walking through ordinary forest air had done plenty to calm her. But Rue was going to need this bolstering drink and any more morsels of strength she could find.</p><p>The circle she had drawn in the mage home's dirt was as wide as her two spread hands, looking large enough as a disturbance in the smooth floor. The real plant wall would be a more massive structure than Rue had ever seen: Ordiny village broodery had been a few stone’s throws across and it held forty aemet children at any one time. Forty small aemets who clustered tight around the pillars of adult presence — whatever size or shape those adults happened to be. But everyone in Aloftway was a child, this time, in the enormous broodery they would build and seal off all entrance to. They were all childen today — strong, learned folk, but still children looking up at the trees.</p><p>Rue cleaned her cup in the tub of washing sand — and she sensed motion in the street before she had even stepped past the door curtain. Ferrin passed by, bounding upward on tree trunks, away on recoiling branches. In the street, aemet folk moved on brisk feet only to pause and linger and clump together; arms aimed pointing fingers; discussion flowed from mouths. Once outside to see it with her eyes, Rue was glad. It was fearful sort of glad caked inside her.</p><p>From around other villagers, Brenne came, her face lighting at the sight of Rue. “We’re all agreed, Rue! One great circle, a stone’s throw space from all the homes and fields. Let’s begin — we’d appreciate your help in choosing the best places to plant.”</p><p>Finally, a move to action — and one Rue knew well. The plan was slotting into place with aemets’ natural skills and old-borne ways. Smiling despite herself, she replied, “I’ll start marking a circle off. Have someone bring Middling soil, I don’t think we’ll be able to avoid all the poor spots.”</p><p>“Of course.” Brenne paused, and her eye was caught by the vibrant red of the passing Syril of Reyardine. “Good Reyardine! I’ve got a task for you.”</p><p>He dropped into a bow, wings fanning — like he had been holding the gesture and waiting for an excuse. “Anything, my good Foster! Speak the word and I’ll hang garlands on it!”</p><p>“Would you help us dig up Middling soil?”</p><p>The Reyardine shrank and inflated simultaneously, his wings closing and his back feathers lifting. “Ah … Digging?” His smile shrank like a drying rain puddle.</p><p>“To place around the village. The fertile soil will help feed our plantcasting.”</p><p>Straightening, Syril reapplied his grin. “It’s not that I wouldn’t delight in helping, it’s only that, ah, I’m not much of a pit-digger!”</p><p>Canting her head, Brenne looked him over. “I’ve seen you carrying some very heavy pouches. Surely you’ve got the strength for it. Please, friend — come with me.”</p><p>Syril spluttered even as he followed Brenne — some elaborate analogy about putting a pigeon to work when a horse couldn’t be found. Rue couldn’t manage to feel badly for the Reyardine, though. He would surely manage.</p><p>And with that in mind, Rue took her walking stick and her alert guard dog, and she began marking a line around the bustling village. It started behind Mara’s house and scribed westward — around the training circle Brenne never used, behind homes by a long stone's throw. Cutting through the most promising colours of soil Rue could recall, and the most encouraging symbols she had marked down. Feor fidgeted with half-grasped excitement, and folk came to see her marking. It looked like a mere scrawling to Rue but something about it shared courage with folk, stoking them braver as they looked at that furrow in the dirt.</p><p>“Put a large one here, maybe bring the spiny plum—”</p><p>“I’ll wrap some things about each other—”</p><p>Aemets left and returned with plants cradled in their hands, cuttings and seedlings and tendrils of vine.</p><p>“Can it stretch tall enough? Maybe—”</p><p>“No, no, deeper than that. The taproots—”</p><p>Ferrin saw the need and hurried away, too, returning with digging spades and cooking spoons, with pantry boxes and storage bags. A few didn’t leave but simply dug into the earth with their hands, throwing sprays of dark earth between their legs.</p><p>With a furlong of line drawn out, Rue paused to watch the scene. Intensity charged the air, a sense of hope, a combined tingling of folk’s energy as they parted their green-glowing hands and watched plants stretch up between. Ferrin left and returned with their family homes' water pails. Rue hurried into the throngs to point out weak areas of soil, the segments of line that needed fertilizer. Giosso brushed by her, laden down with water buckets, apologizing for the water splashing onto Rue’s shoes.</p><p>And once Rue extracted herself from the fray — from the strange, clustered presence of her own kind — she watched plants stretching up with greater vigor, with a crackling of new-grown wood.</p><p>“Pace yourselves,” Brenne warned. She moved from aemet to aemet, checking kin with a keen eye and prodding with her nails.</p><p>And suddenly, Rue was aware of wings. Steady beats in the chaotic air above, the approach of a korvishape. One that flapped in confused loops before landing — like a newcomer.</p><p>The korvi was a burst of colour dropping in amid the green, her flared wings the bright orange colour of marigold blooms. Her tassel-edged apron whipped in her own wind. She alighted graceful, a bird-like poise in her curled feet before they struck earth. As the air settled around her she looked around, meeting the dozens of stares turned to her.</p><p>“Ah. Hello.” She must not have expected such a welcome, the stone stillness of interrupted work; she shrank smaller while exhaling her flight smoke. “Pardon my interruption!”</p><p>“Vraya,” came Syril’s shout from the middle of the street, “good friend! What a mulled cup of wonderful that you’ve joined us! Thank the gods for small sparks lighting grand fires, that’s what I say!”</p><p>“Well, then! Welcome to Aloftway,” Brenne added. She approached the newcomer. “If you're seeking the mage, that would be me.”</p><p>“Vraya of Anduille,” the korvi said. She shuffled her feathers, smiling fragile but genuine. “I’ve heard about this place and I brought you a few things, just some rosehips and such. And, ah. I thought I might lend myself for a day. I can cook and, well, the usual things you might expect!” She opened her wings a few quillwidths.</p><p>“We’re glad to have you, good Anduille,” Brenne said. “In fact, you’ve picked a good time to offer your hands.”</p><p>Passing them by — with a heaped basket of soil spilling dirt crumbs around his feet — Syril said, “Take my word and trade it at a high price, friends, Vraya can feed a soul as much as she can feed a belly!”</p><p>Her eyes flicking between distant ideas, Brenne hesitated. “Could I have you moving between two different tasks? Minding folk and minding a cookfire? I hate to ask it, but I’m sure you can manage.” She motioned and Vraya followed her away — toward a mountain of information, Rue had no doubt. This Vraya friend would hear about the wolves, the wall, and three years’ worth of history in one muddled tale.</p><p>Across the street, Rue caught Judellie’s eye — while Judellie carried an empty pail and an empty basket, both surely in need of refilling.</p><p><span class="u">Mother</span>, Rue mouthed.</p><p>Tipping her head, then understanding with a widening of eyes, Judellie nodded. She pointed to the opposite end of the street, the southwest entrance to the village. Where the other half of folk worked. Aloftway was divided even while they worked together, it seemed. But Judellie paused, and waved a lean hand at Brenne and Vraya’s retreating backs. <span class="u">I’ll look after them, too,</span> she seemed to sigh.</p><p>Visiting korvi were a gift in this place, but Vraya was being put to work and like Brenne, like everyone else, she might be spent by the time they were through. The scraped line at Rue’s feet caught her eye again, as did the walking stick she was supposed to be drawing with. If she hurried, she could be done and be on to greater tasks. She only hurried her pace slightly, though. Rue Tennel needed to mind herself, too.</p><p>With a few more eightmoments’ drawing, Rue finished the outline. It connected to a line she didn’t remember making — but Mother had been working on this side of the village. Making small use of the Tennel arts before she knelt over a plant, and she now focused on a bramble vine like she had been there for hours. Its stem and leaves stretched up around a maple trunk, with thorns emerging as slow as dripping honey; Denelend watched and hopped nervously, clenching a handful of seed-shaped things. For a heartbeat, Rue considered rechecking Mother’s drawn outline, to be sure the soil would support rapid growth. But if the head Tennel couldn’t be trusted with that, who could? Even if she was a fraction of her former self, that former self had tried fields and stirred seeds with all the surety anyone could want, somewhere in long-gone days. With pride settling grey inside her, Rue turned back, toward the expanse of outline with no one working on it. She had work to do, as well.</p><p>Rue backtracked along her outline, eyed it and sensed distances. And she picked a landmark far from other working aemets: a maple seedling that happened to be there, one that fit easily inside her tented hands. Stretching her casting essence out of her palms, Rue found the seedling’s life essence and gave it the crumb of encouragement it needed. This tree wanted to grow already and Rue only needed to guide it, to share from her own soul and tug the tree in the right directions: into a bush-shaped being, one with branches spread opposite each other like a leaf-topped fence.</p><p>She was imagining where to thread vines into it when a korvishape approached hurried: Vraya the visitor, holding out a handful while Rue turned toward her.</p><p>“You’re Rue, isn’t that right? I was told you’d know where to put the rose seeds.” Her cupped palm was full of the crushed flesh of a rosehip and the tiny seeds within.</p><p>“Yes — yes to both of those things.”</p><p>Vraya smiled. It was a genuine motion, too calm to be false. On a face Rue had never seen before today — gods, it shouldn’t have been a strange feeling to meet a newcomer, a new friend.</p><p>Lowering her voice, Rue added, “Thank you for coming. I’m sure you’ve been told that already, but … It’ll do this place more good than anyone can say. Just the fact that you flew over here.”</p><p>“If I had known it was like this, I wouldn’t have waited,” Vraya confessed. She tipped the seeds into Rue’s smaller palm. “But, ah. I’ll be checking on folk. Call out if there’s anything I can bring you! Drinks and such.”</p><p>Rue nodded. She would need to get used to all this motion. And everyone would need to manage their strength; she could already feel a leaching emptiness where her plantcasting had flowed outward.</p><p>She found a decent place for the roses — sandy soil on the southern side, loose enough for broad roots to fill. It was lucky Vraya had brought rosehips or else that spot would be a detriment, somewhere to muddy with Middling soil. Rue started the seeds, reluctant though they were, and began a twining rose patch before she stopped to rest.</p><p>Beyond Rue’s body full of pounding pulse, green shone from all corners of the village. Plantcasting shaded by aemet hands and shimmering into growing plants. Their project couldn’t be called a wall yet, not with so many gaps. But there were places the wind turned away from dense thickets of leaves, places air struggled to drain through.</p><p>One neighbour stopped, the light fading from her palms and the new-grown tree before her. She stood, wobbling — and friends darted to her side to lead her to a resting place. She might not have been the first villager to tire herself. She definitely wouldn’t be the last.</p><p>With that example in mind, Rue took a eightmoment to breathe and feel the air around her. Ferrin came by with pan bread and flasks full of water — water with tangy-cool mint in it, Rue discovered when she took a mouthful, and pan bread richer than anyone in Aloftway ever made. She shared a morsel with grateful-licking Feor. Denelend passed overhead, leaping from branch to branch in explosions of motion and then pausing to listen, to inhale careful.</p><p>A wolf howl broke the quiet. A quavering sound louder than Rue had ever heard it, that yanked folk’s attention out into the southern forest.</p><p>They needed to pace themselves, but another strike might come at a moment no one could guess. Rue turned back to the rose bush; she had a strong enough presence of plantcasting in her to keep on, and these spined branches were nearly thick enough to repel a large beast. Feor stood wire-taut beside her. And beyond Rue’s focus, at the base of a tree, Denelend descended to the ground. His brightcasting shone pure white, and faded as he carried on.</p><p>Moments washed away, as quick as the branches and leaflets stretching under Rue’s hands. The gemlight was a new colour when she looked up again, afternoon settling heavy and Feor staring out into the forest, like he could sense past the rose branches latticed together. Rue put a hand on his neck, on the bristled-thick fur and Feor started, and hurriedly licked her hand.</p><p>As wide as two folk’s spread arms, and taller than Rue’s antennae arches, these roses made a sure fence. A duskmouse might slip through — nothing larger than that. But the soil grew dense to the right side of this patch, and another plant would fare better than roses. A spiny plum, perhaps, or an ironwood if someone could find a cutting or a sapling. With that truth in mind, Rue stood looking down the street at the changed scenery: shadows blanketed more of this village, thanks to thickets that had sprung up behind homes. But this wasn't nearly enough. A few boards lashed together wasn’t enough to keep out a storm.</p><p>Brenne approached, with a swarm of ferrin pattering alongside. The wild ferrin were back with cuttings in their mouths, stems wrapped with enough green leaves to shield them from thorns. As Brenne spoke and pointed, ferrin broke from the group. Chi didn’t seem to need direction: she hurried to Rue on four quick feet. She held a plant that made a chill gather in Rue’s blood, one with thorns like knives slicing the air.</p><p>“Stay,” Rue murmured to Feor, and she took hold of his collar just to be sure. He wiggled as Chi approached and Rue didn’t trust that he wouldn’t push his nose straight into that endnettle cutting. “Hello, Chi. Be careful with that.”</p><p>She hummed agreement, muffled through the round wad of leaves protecting her mouth. She straightened onto her haunches, removed the cutting with slow-moving care, and regarded Rue. “This is … Is dangerous. All wild things know, it has a bad smell.” Her ears stayed low and flexed backward; she must have struggled against her needle-sharp instincts every moment she kept an endnettle branch held in her mouth.</p><p>Rue took it, finding herself just as careful as she placed fingers around the bunched leaves. She could imagine the bite of those thorns and it was a terrifying possibility. And the end of that branch caught her eye — a clean, diagonal cut. Made with a vigorous knife stroke. “Did … Felixi give you this?”</p><p>She waved her arms, suddenly alight with excitement, mimicking korvi wingbeats curling downward. “He saw us, he came! He said plants are better than seeds, for helping you.”</p><p>Canny as ever, that Felixi of Velgarro. Rue turned the endnettle cutting, finding new buds dotting it, the leaves all glossy and whole. “He is right. This will help us.”</p><p>“You need …” Chi peered at Rue’s face, thought shifting over her body in rotating ears and angling whiskers. “I can bring you more things?”</p><p>Whenever great efforts were undertaken, ferrin sensed the need for support and found niches they could fill. It was a skill Rue hadn’t considered in this light before, while she crouched beside her wary dog, full of gnawing concerns and spending more plantcasting than she ever had before. Rue set the endnettle cutting down. Maybe she was exuding some scent she could never comprehend, telling some tale of worries in the every twitch of her face.</p><p>“We … we’re working hard to grow so many plants. Plants are slow. Growing them bigger takes a lot of …” She couldn’t imagine how to explain casting; that was as plain a fact as life and love. The best Rue could manage was to lift her hand and tap her breastbone, a vague motion toward everything a person was.</p><p>Chi sat like a still, dark pool. She shifted on her feet, tail waving like wafting smoke. “This is for you. Felixi says,” and then her voice shifted to a surer tone, an echo of Felixi himself, “wolves are on the leg on the east side, in a slow-moving pack. Be careful, stay alert.”</p><p>Rue frowned. “He said... Did he seem—“ She grasped for ideas. Chi could see the finest grades of a person’s mood but how would she put those truths into ungainly words? “Ah. What did his face look like?"</p><p>Chi tipped her head — and then quickly formed herself into a closer mimickry of Felixi. She stood tall on the balls of her feet, tail curled against the ground, snouted face glowering at nothing. With flicking eyes that didn't seem sure of where to look. Considering, maybe. Rue would bet a whole harvest that Chi's portrayal was accurate — surely more accurate than Felixi would ever know.</p><p>"I think," Rue told her new, honest friend, “that he is going to change this village. He just doesn't know it yet.”</p><p>Smiling — with a warmth glowing in her furred features — Chi nodded. “He helps. He will help you, too.”</p><p>Rue deeply hoped that was the truth. They had plenty to do and gods only knew how long it would be until the next wolf attack. The plantcasters behind Rue had made less progress across the leaf litter than she would have hoped. She released Feor's collar, picked up Felixi's dangerous gift, and set about rooting it in Aloftway's soil.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0027"><h2>27. Chapter 27</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The day flowed onward, time disappearing behind effort. Trees and shrubs were removed from the earth and shifted into new place; plantcasting light shone from all corners of Aloftway. The afternoon was deeply golden, the shadows’ depth warning of oncoming night, and most of the villagers trudged into their homes for relief. The korvi folk passed a handful of times, bearing water and breathing smoke thickly into the wind; they were a collective smudge in Rue’s memory of the hours.</p><p>“You’re sure you won’t have a meal?” Denelend asked Rue. He shifted on his feet, tail waving uneasy. “I don’t know what Vraya put in it that stew but it’s got a flavour like nothing else.”</p><p>“Later,” Rue said. She regretted her tone immediately but Denelend held steady. “I … I just want to keep at this a while longer. We don’t have much time.”</p><p>“You’re not draining yourself, are you?”</p><p>“If Mother can work this long, I surely can.” She wanted to see the sight for herself — Mother sitting on a cushion, focusing to this plant-shaping task— but she trusted Denelend’s word.</p><p>The wall crawled forward, on the twining determination of growing plant stalks. It met the northern mountain base and climbed as high as it could onto rock; Rue made sure that spiny plants made up that part of the wall, brambles and nettles with enough plantcasting energy poured into them to make the vines thick and bristled with wicked thorns. Part of the endnettle got a rooting place where Surgings Mountain's sheer cliff peak rose from the soil — where ferrin scrambled up to place handfuls of dirt along it, where Rue stretched to curl her hand close enough. The endnettle grew vigorously, clutching the meagre amount of soil with new roots, curling its shoots in spiny loops down the rock face. Endnettle thorns wove in among smaller, less lethal thorns -- and after an experimental sniff of the plant wall, the ferrin stepped nervously away and said that this plant was a strong enough warning. If a hunting creature wanted to get past the wall in this direction, it would need wings.</p><p>Rue stopped then for a meal, one she shared with restless Feor. They sat in the Fernings’ borrowed home, sharing barley stew while Vraya bustled between cookpots. The meal truly did have a flavour like nothing else; Vraya had used some clever blend of herbs, a sprinkling of a secret that she kindly refused to divulge.</p><p>Rue couldn't speak for any of the others, but she hadn't cast so much in one day before: her vision wobbled when she turned her head too quickly. They would need to be careful if there was any more growing to be done. Putting themselves in a state of drain — sapped of too much essential casting strength, weak and drowsy — could be the death of a person.</p><p>And as Rue thought that, movement appeared in the distant air, rushing closer. Her heart jumped but this was only an aemet friend running toward them; she was able to discern Brenne's features a heartbeat before she appeared around the corner of a wooden home. Portent was painted all over Brenne's face, the warning of something gone terribly wrong.</p><p>"Rue, everyone," Brenne shouted. “They're inside.”</p><p>"What?!"</p><p>"The wolves are within our barrier!" She stopped in front of Rue, pointing to the north-eastern cliff face -- and the only opening left to ground-walking creatures. “Two of them struck from behind while we were building the wall. Stay together, keep your dogs close. Does anyone have the strength left for healing?"</p><p>"I... I think I do," answered one fellow.</p><p>Brenne raised her hands. “Hold on to it. Giosso and the dogs stopped the attack and we're mending them now, but if--"</p><p>She stopped short. Everyone sensed the same thing she sensed: movement in the underbrush, between them and the thorned wall, from something too large to be harmless. It crept closer.</p><p>"Feor," Rue said in shaking voice. She could sense his attention, the eager tremble of his muscles as he stared toward the threat. “<span class="u">Stay</span>.” Slipping her guard ring farther down her hand, Rue walked closer.</p><p>"Rue...” Brenne's voice hissed low, “Be careful... I don't think any korvi are—”</p><p>"One moment. This wolf... It feels different.” Hand drifting to her fire-heavy tunic pocket, Rue focused on the space before her. Her instincts pulled away from the creature, filling her with a white and buzzing panic, but this lurking motion didn't feel like the other wolves. This one nearly crawled, its belly low to the ground. Not like a dangerous hunter. More like a wounded wretch. However much her instincts screamed, Rue needed to see the truth for herself; plans couldn't be made on panicked guesses.</p><p>She was a few armlengths away now, pushing branches aside, moving steady so that none present would be startled. The wolf growled in low, ragged voice. Feor hackled harder and growled back.</p><p>"<span class="u">Hold</span>," Rue snapped. The creature was hidden from sight by one more bush but moving those branches would be a step too close — Rue knew that through the clamour of her terrified innards. Her airsense was knife-sharp to everything now, the grooves of leaves and the textures of bark and soil — and the odd feel of the wolf's outline. Not fully covered in fur. Bare and wrinkled in places. Like the burned patch of Dwo's tail that Rue had sensed through the trees.</p><p>"Gods," Rue breathed. “They're—"</p><p>Burn victims just like they-the-eight. Scarred from the great fire, and eating anything they could catch.</p><p>“Stay back.”</p><p>Felixi’s bark came from above. His presence filled that quiet moment, his spread-winged form dropping from the sky, wingbeats buffeting the street dust. Aloftway faces aimed toward him. He landed and stared ahead, at Rue; his wings didn’t quite close, mantled around him like feathered walls.</p><p>“The wolves, they’re burn victims,” Rue told him, her attention yanked by the bristling of Feor’s fur. “They’re—“</p><p>“They’ve been lurking about here all day and they’re unpredictable, so you should stay back, clearly.” His broad form came alongside Rue. He watched the same patch of brush she did, with a hot fullness inside his throat, a prelude to flame. “What to do now, hmm? Strike it?”</p><p>“You mean—” Rue had imagined reacting to a threat. Pushed by on the spurs of fear. The thought of advancing toward a cringing creature was a shape too large to understand, a sadness seizing her by the throat.</p><p>Felixi growled on smoky breath: “Be active or don’t. Do you think this beast wouldn’t strike you down for food? It will, as soon as its hunger overcomes its fear.”</p><p>He was right. The hunter knew what a hunter would do; the wolf was already turning toward them, angling its clawpoints to pierce the dirt. Rue pulled at her command ring, wanting its weight in her hand instead of cloying her wrist. “<span class="u">Stay</span>,” she snapped at Feor — whose growling was dragging him forward. “It’s … like putting a creature out of its suffering, then?”</p><p>“I suppose.” Felixi had more to say; his breath stopped in his throat and he hackled, glancing behind. As though the bystanding Aloftway folk were breathing on the back of his neck.</p><p>“We’re not good at making that kind of strike,” Rue said low. Her pulse was loud in her ears. “Feor wouldn’t do it cleanly. And I couldn't—“</p><p>Huffing smoke, Felixi snatched for his knife, unsheathing it with a flash of light. He crouched and his wings spread out into wide feather fans — blocking Feor’s line of sight, Rue thought as leaves whipped and the wolf snarled warning. Her sense caught on the raised lines of tendons in Felixi’s striking arm, the sure grip on the knife he held — and the glob of smoke he spat, the wolf’s snarling peaking as it lunged against Felixi’s sweeping arm. And when his knife arm swept just as hard, voices sounded behind Rue. The village folk gasped like they had seen the sight — despite Felixi’s quills still spread, sheening in the daybright.</p><p>He wasn’t just blocking the dog’s sight, but all of Aloftway’s. Small mote of good that did for aemet folk.</p><p>Rue pushed herself to motion — to gripping Feor’s collar, to speaking some soothing nonsense that lowered his hackles. Then she couldn't ignore the neighbours' shocked murmured any longer.</p><p>“It won’t hurt anyone now,” she announced: she was near enough to feel the lack of breath, the wetness seeping through the wolf’s fur.</p><p>Felixi released his grip on furred skin. He straightened, unfolding his tensed joints. He turned his mouth past his wing — and he looked straight at Rue. “I’ve been watching this pack for years and I’ve never seen this one hunting. It’s feeble. They must have denned somewhere very near here.”</p><p>A many-mouthed gasp fell from Aloftway’s villagers, a motion drowned out by the shock filling Rue. Felixi hadn’t only hunted food creatures. He had monitored the wolves with knowing eyes. He held a precious wealth of information and he had kept it from Rue all this time.</p><p>“The den might be a stone’s throw away,” someone wondered.</p><p>“Call for Judellie and Giosso!”</p><p>“We should check the southern cragsides. Has anyone seen Denelend in the—”</p><p>Howls sounded from the distant forest, the quavering echo of wolves surrounding the village. Every aemet froze, tense in body, stone-stiff in posture.</p><p>“Group together,” Felixi muttered. “They strike at lone stragglers.”</p><p>“Everyone,” Rue called. She waved arms. “Stay together! All in one group! It’s the only way to be safe!”</p><p>They hurried away, the mass of aemet folk hurrying toward the other end of the main street, ferrin lolloping. A scream shrilled not far off, another aemet stricken.</p><p>She nearly bolted herself — but Felixi still stood planted like a stake, his wings folding, his stare fierce and distant.</p><p>“What now,” he growled, his small voice full of smoke. This moment had been a teaching story, this scene spilled across everyone’s senses. But Rue couldn’t understand it — not until they were safe, not until they had air to think in.</p><p>“Felixi,” Rue said. She was too full of fire but she wasn’t a korvi; she couldn’t spit out the burning inside her. “Just— Hunt these wolves, these ones attacking us right now. All of them. We’ll never ask anything more of you. Never again.”</p><p>His eyes lit, pupils narrow as a snake’s. “That’s a bargain?”</p><p>“Yes!”</p><p>He snapped his wings back open and lifted off, the battering air sluicing over Rue’s outer surface. She followed him on her own running feet — finally, blessedly running — toward the frothing motion of all Aloftway, and her dog was at her side.</p><p>Folk were gathered now, drawn together by the current of fear, gathered near the uncompleted plant wall with a raw edge of loose vines. Brenne gave off a glow of clean white among the other folk, her palms charged with brightcasting and waving in gestures. <span class="u">Shouldn't run yet</span>, she said. And removed from all of them was a crouched form, an aemet with her head and hands bent toward the vines. Mother. Trembling in a way Rue could sense even stone-throws away, in the shivering ends of her antennae.</p><p>“No,” Rue hissed to only herself. Mother was casting herself into a state of drain. Seeing the wound-tight plants as a blessing, an offering, a cause to follow with all her handful of strength. Between Rue and Mother was a panicked knot of folk, murmuring in taut voices.</p><p>“Everyone,” Rue said loud. “We ought to move somewhere safer. Felixi is seeking the wolves right now.”</p><p>“Judellie and Giosso, too.” Brenne said. She stared a question at Rue. “Up the cliffside? ”</p><p>Brenne must have been imagining the skyward path marked by the dandelion valley, like they could follow those wild-churning mountain winds to safety — and the thought made Rue’s stomach lurch.</p><p>“Or our homes, inside walls. We can block the doors with boxes.” Rue never thought she would be suggesting that Aloftway cower inside its homes. “Just— Pardon me, I’ll need through here.” She turned, sensing the round path that would bring her to Mother.</p><p>As Brenne nodded, folk drifted toward their sure-tied homes, out of Rue's way. Mother came into eyes’ view — the curve of her shawl-draped shell, her working posture like this was simply another day in the Middling circle.</p><p>Dread pricked at Rue’s heart. The farthest shimmers of sense showed her movement in the forest. Shapes she couldn’t define and couldn’t trust. The wind shifted, a different angle drawn through the leaves and in the very same instant, the ferrin sitting nearest to Mother turned — Denelend, never far away.</p><p>“Watch out,” he barked as the movements lunged nearer, as the aemet villagers cleared and Rue had clear sense of the wolfshape on running feet, aimed at Mother.</p><p>Elova Tennel looked up and gasped air inward, the green lifeforce still trickling from her palms as she raised them.</p><p>How could she protect, Rue snapped at her racing heart? She was full of a whirlwind saying <span class="u">run, run</span><span>; h</span>er bones pulled eight ways and she didn’t know the answer. But she did. She had fire in her tunic pocket and there was a hackling guardian right here at her side<span>.</span></p><p>“F-Feor!” Rue raised a hand, pointing true at the emerging snout and opening jaws. “<span class="u">Attack!</span>”</p><p>Her dog rushed. Mother was trembling upward, pushing to her feet as the patch-furred demon sank fangs into her thin wrist. Pulling her off her already shaking feet but releasing — wetly, throwing a spray of blood — to snarl at Feor. A snarl bitten off as Feor snapped fanged jaws of his own.</p><p>And another shape approached, a second wolf aiming for Feor’s flank. But brightcasting shone now — from Denelend, his fur glowing lantern-bright, his ears pinned back.</p><p>Apart from this dread scene, Rue’s hands fumbled for her pocket. Fire, was all she could think past the roaring flight urge. They needed fire.</p><p>But Denelend had none and the dogshapes thrashed. The second wolf’s teeth shone blinding in the bright light as it snarled toward the source of the wrong-element glare, and that was when Denelend made a lunge of his own. Small among the dogshapes but grazing past deadly jaws, snapping with his own.</p><p>Ferrin cracking nuts: that flashed in Rue’s mindsight. Every time a small friend had placed an acorn between their backmost teeth and crushed it effortless, a gift from their goddess. <span class="u">Don’t count them short</span>, said a korvi-voiced memory.</p><p>Two brave friends outsized against their foes, struggling and claws braced into the dirt. Aemets ran past, wedges splitting the air in straight paths. Rue couldn’t find Mother; there was no bent, weak shape among the winds of this storm. She couldn’t see anymore, couldn’t pull the blaze beryl from her pocket because the edge caught against fabric and her hands were too fear-clumsy. Wind drowned out sensation, a downward gale and thick clouds outlining the four creatures locked together, and Rue yanked the firecasting stone free because her heart would break if she couldn’t give something more—</p><p>Hands stifled hers. Large hands beyond the mingled buzz of casting elements.</p><p>“Rue. <span class="u">Rue</span>.”</p><p>She kept pulling at the casting, a feeling like coaxing it toward and repelling it from the same place. Because the fire liked the hands against Rue’s — Judellie’s flight-hot skin.</p><p>“I’m—” Rue looked up into dark eyes, the reptile gaze of this truest guardian. “I’m here. Where— Is everyone …?”</p><p>“Scraped up, but they are whole.”</p><p>Judellie’s breath still carried smoke, the same-feeling cloud that had outlined Feor and Denelend and the wolves so thickly. And behind Judellie's broad-hackled shape, Feor and Denelend still moved. Two limp shapes didn’t.</p><p>“Find your head, <span class="u">temprenne</span>,” Judellie murmured, hot and fond. She moved a hand to Rue’s cheek and the shape of her thumb was a burning brand. “Just breathe. ”</p><p>“I’m fine,” Rue said. Fine enough, she hoped. The korvitongue word — <span class="u">temprenne</span> — stayed lodged in her head and meant nothing, just a sound made of Judellie’s voice.</p><p>“Look after your family. I am going to find others — they ran, they still need me.”</p><p>Rue barely nodded and Judellie was releasing her to the cool air, backing away and leaping and flapping. Rue faced a terrible scene again — but this one had Denelend in its middle, grooming determined at his sticky-dark fur. And Feor heading toward Rue on three feet, streaked just as wet and whining grateful.</p><p>Mother sat nearby, slowing her breath to calm while a Barmond son dragged brightcasting sparks from his palms. As Mother turned her sight to Rue, a smile touched her mouth, smaller and more fearful than Rue had ever seen.</p><p>In the hour afterward, Brenne made sure the village was cared for. She passed out a small trove of healing stones — three clear crystals with white sparks wavering inside them, yet another gift from Vraya — and then she turned her own hands toward great queue of injured. Folk with wolf bites and bruises and stunned looks staining their faces. More aemets returned to the town street — alone, in pairs, in tattered groups — from their panic-blind flight. Judellie and Giosso returned and dropped weighty to the street dirt, each carrying an aemet form— one that squirmed in the flight wind, one that was deathly still.</p><p>It took time for Feor to receive healing, time enough for Rue to press his wounds to clotting and dab the worst of the blood from his fur. Red blood that darkened as the moments passed. Strange how most kinds’ blood looked so vastly different from aemet blood. There had to be some reason, Rue thought dull while refolding the wet cloth. Some fundamental difference in a creature’s body, which housed its heart. Creatures were so very different — even peoplekinds, who all thought and spoke but were made of many secrets inside them.</p><p>Finally, with dusk light streaming through the mage home’s smoke hole, Brenne washed Feor’s neck and foreleg with gentle darkcasting. She worked alone; Mara faced the wall and she breathed, the only sign that she hadn’t turned to stone.</p><p>Releasing a held breath, Brenne let the purple light recede from her hands and she ran them ordinary over Feor’s fur. “He was well worth the effort, hmm?”</p><p>“We could say that,” Rue replied. Juniper’s legend seemed a shade more true after such a trying day.</p><p>“I’ll say it twice.” Brenne picked up a length of neat-torn bandage and tried to wind it around the pink-shining healed spots on Feor’s paw — but he pulled away, whining a low, sad song. “Don’t care for that, ah? Well. The air’s just as good for it, I suppose.” Brenne sighed breathless. She rubbed her face with the relatively clean back of her wrist. “Just pay mind, don’t walk him through brambles. Not that I think you would, dear.”</p><p>“Excuse me?” A ferrin head poked through the door curtain, Denelend slipping past the remaining folk waiting for care. He came in, walking careful so his bandaged middle didn’t shift. “Rue, I saw that Felixi fellow.”</p><p>His name was a bolt through the heart. Felixi of Velgarro, who grudgingly shared.</p><p>“I was hoping someone would,” Rue said. “Did he tell you anything?”</p><p>“He only told me to take a message to Rue Tennel. He says, this saga is over. If you need him, you’ll know where to find him.”</p><p>And a pause hung expectant, with Denelend eyeing Rue’s expression and a bitterness swelling in Rue’s heart. Felixi didn’t even have the nerve to come find her, to finish their bargain face to face. But Rue did know where to find him: maybe he would still honour an older arrangement.</p><p>“I saw the good Velgarro dropping onto a wolf,” Brenne said. “Aloftway was lucky to have him here.”</p><p>“It’s a marvel he landed in this town at all,” Rue murmured.</p><p>She certainly wouldn’t have guessed it from that splinter-sharp gaze in the daisy field, the distance between them like furlongs of empty road. Or from the clinging sense that Felixi knew, that he understood Aloftway’s failings and he simply wasn’t speaking. Like Rue was too slight, too new to hear it. Something rose inside Rue; her hand tightened against Feor’s fur and she rose, the dog’s head turning to follow her. It was wind-blown luck that Felixi had passed a message along and she was sick of it, sick of all the hoping and waiting.</p><p>“We made a bargain,” Rue said. “That’s why he guarded us against the wolves. He promised to hunt them all. And I think he’s kept up his half, but … I need some clean words between us before I’ll be sure. I’ll see to it. Tomorrow, I suppose.” She stood. Without a word to command it, Feor hobbled to follow, bumping sure against her thigh. “You’ll need things, won’t you? Someone can cast on your valerian, but we won’t have enough avens, or burnet … What else? Managrass?” Rue didn’t relish that thought, searching out managrass fronds down the far east slope.</p><p>Brenne stared, eyes wide against the air. “You’re— You’re not going out, dear?!”</p><p>“Into this forest that doesn’t have wolves anymore? Yes, I am. Felixi said he would strike down all of the wolves that were attacking us, so if there’s any danger in me walking out there, Felixi of Velgarro has lied. I don’t need luck to know any of that.”</p><p><span class="u">I don’t need luck</span>. It felt like warm light, hearing that spoken in her own voice. After all this running and fretting and searching.</p><p>The weight of it pulled Brenne’s mouth into a thin line, and made her take a long and considering breath. She looked as tired as Mother, as worn by life's burdens. “If you have business with him … Well then, best of fortune, Rue. Tell me how the forest is faring, if you would.”</p><p>Rue nodded. She was a presence larger than herself, turning to Denelend with only calm. “Is Mother settling?”</p><p>“Err. Some,” Denelend said. His ears dropped a fraction. “Her healed bite mark looks clean but … I’ll fix her some valerian tea. Don’t worry.”</p><p>With a tug, Rue removed the guard ring. “And if you could mind this beast—“</p><p>Movement flickered. Something vibration-small at Rue’s side, among Feor’s drooping tail and odd-balanced: he had whined quieter than sound.</p><p>She met her dog’s liquid eyes and could see a plea there. Vibration returned, a shivering gathering in his thick coat. Feor broke the gaze and looked to the guard ring, his fate in Rue’s hand.</p><p>“He … doesn’t want to leave me, I suppose?”</p><p>Denelend nodded.</p><p>“He should rest.” But if Rue could trust the Velgarro, there would be no danger out there to greet them. Only the mere act of walking. “Will he make his paw worse if we …?”</p><p>“He’s placing weight on it easily enough,” Brenne wondered, and she shook her head. “If he’ll follow you, I’d take the gift, dear. I can’t mend a broken heart.”</p><p>“There … are a few places I can check near home,” Rue said small, tightening the guard ring back into place. “I’ll carry him back if I need to.” No climbing down a slope for managrass, then; it was a mixed relief.</p><p>At her side, Feor still shivered, but his tail began to wag.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0028"><h2>28. Chapter 28</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Nightfall didn’t bring sleep — just folk slowly, wearily working. Rue and her dog made brief trips arcing through the trees, returning to Aloftway with green leaves. Light stones were placed scattered in the street: clear and cloudy quartz chunks throwing plantcasting green and brightcasting yellow, and in one small quartz at the town’s edge, there was even the lively white of electricasting. Those stones would light the way for the returning korvi allies. Who still sailed in over the trees, flapping and landing hard, burdened with found aemet friends whose wounds had clotted.</p><p>In the deepest shade of night, Rue returned to the mage home to find Brenne and Mara as unmoving, blanketed lumps. Vraya was there, minding a stewpot. She was nearly the same colour as the hearth flames, a placid woman wearing shadows and copper trinkets.</p><p>“I burn a tall candle some nights, anypace,” she told Rue with a smile. “It happens when you have an inn to keep. But I’ll put the herbs aside for your mage, would that be well?”</p><p>As long as someone minded Aloftway, then no, Rue didn’t mind.</p><p>She kept on through gathering fog, the growing weight of fatigue on her sight and senses. And as bright dawn broke through the night, Rue returned home. Passed through the same door curtain as on calmer days, and sensed the air stirred by her two family members. Mother and Denelend were safe, Mother with a shrivelled willow leaf clutched to her chest. Feor turned a circle and fell straight into sleep, too. It took Rue longer, but only a moment, long enough to feel her own weight against the bed mat and know a numb kind of calm, a truth that this house was still standing.</p><p>Why everyone in the Tennel home woke for breakfast, Rue couldn’t have said. She jerked awake at the first movements of air — the ones from Denelend rising from his nest. Mother started awake, too, but moved slowly, a shifting out of her bed like the gathering of windblown sand.</p><p>They had scant handfuls of plant food this day, enough for Rue to cook a pan bread flecked with green. She steamed dry meat back to succulence for Feor — meat she couldn't identify, but Mother said the ferrin had brought. Then they four sat chewing together under the daybright, the aura of light around the dwindling hearth coals. Feor, it seemed, was the only one taking joy in the chewing and swallowing.</p><p>“I’m going out today,” Rue said, turning a burnt crust between her fingers. “There’ll be something fresh-grown for dinner. ”</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Denelend blurted.</p><p>It was a shattering of the quiet, a flash through this tired air. Mother turned her eyes to Denelend but said nothing; she had eyes distant today, like Mara’s, and Rue prayed that would pass.</p><p>“Sorry … for what?” she asked Denelend.</p><p>Looking into the hearth’s ashes, ears limp against his neck, he said. “For what I did. Not for helping you, though!” He turned his trembling whiskers toward Mother. “If it happened again today, I’d help you just the same. What I mean is … I’m sorry I did what I did. Hurting a creature.”</p><p>Sorry in the widest sense anyone could be, an apology scattered to the winds like the gods might hear it. Sorry in the same way Rue was sorry any of them sat here in this village, facing what remained after storm winds finished tearing.</p><p>“I know you’re supposed to— To break its neck or some other fast strike.” He gestured vague with his caretakers' hands. “But I saw that wolf coming and— And I didn’t know what else to do.”</p><p>Mother laid a hand over his shoulders. A sad smile kindled in her face, paler now than it ever had been.</p><p>The duty to speak was Rue’s clearly enough. She tried, “It’s not a sin to protect yourself or your family, that’s what I’ve always heard.”</p><p>“Yeah …” Denelend drew strength, flicking a grateful glance to Rue.</p><p>A korvishape approached outside — Judellie, surely not coming for breakfast at a pace like that.</p><p>“Good day,” she said. Her voice fell listless but pleasant; her feathers stood rumpled off her back, unpreened. “Rue? If you have got a moment, Aloftway needs you.”</p><p>All of Aloftway calling for her again. “Why?” Rue asked as she rose.</p><p>Judellie dropped into her tail, sighing large. “They are wondering what to do with the wolves. Brenne just went to sleep and Mara would not tell us even if she was awake … I told folk that Rue Tennel may have some wise ideas.”</p><p>“Oh.” Pride tempered the old sense of annoyance; Rue was a flawed stone of a mageling but she could still lead this village in a brave direction. Father would smile fond, if he knew. Mother already did.</p><p>With Judellie at her side, Rue went to the day-lit street, toward the clustered gathering of Aloftway villagers. They stood near the half-finished plant wall, where Mother had struggled and Denelend had fought, but now a mound of furred remains laid there. Giosso added another wolf, a last, limp weight. Syril of Reyardine fidgeted beside him, murmuring a long string of words, unwinding equally long strings of beads from his wrists as though preparing for lifting work. Here it was: the end of Aloftway’s troubles, if they could only take this last step.</p><p>“The Barmonds say they can save some of the meat,” Judellie murmured, stooped near Rue’s ear. “But folk did not seem to like that much …?”</p><p>Some mix of aemet fears and worries, and half-remembered legends to guide them. And the lingering fear of all they had seen, the gut-deep flinch they still felt with every gust of breeze past these dead creatures. And Rue was supposed to know how to calm it, she supposed, being an aemet herself. Like her betweenkind flesh taught her more than she could ever grasp.</p><p>“Err. Everyone,” Rue said.</p><p>“Ah, good,” said a neighbour, brightening at the sight of Rue’s face. “We weren’t sure whether to simply bury these, or …?”</p><p>The Barmond family — most of them, anypace — watched Rue steadily. Dogs shifted at their masters’ sides.</p><p>“Let’s—” Rue’s voice caught, like on briars. She knew what her kind would want, and what they craved to hear, and she had a half dozen thoughts more practical than either of those. “I think … we should salvage what we can.” She nodded to the Barmonds. “If you would.”</p><p>“Of course,” they agreed in a chorus.</p><p>“The hides and bones. And whatever good meat you can save for the dogs.” Rue swallowed. “And gather what can't be used. We can make funerals of it.”</p><p>Silence. Villagers turned wide eyes to her, ferrin ears raising in between the still aemets. It was an odd idea but, Rue wagered, this would mix her bold father and her pious mother’s best wishes.</p><p>“We’ll trade the leathers and bones. Clearly enough, we need the trade.”</p><p>“Say that twice and I’ll agree twice more,” Syril chimed.</p><p>Sparing him a glance, Rue went on. “And … the funerals are to lay the wolves to rest. They did terrible things, but just think of what Felixi said: they were hungry. The same as we’ve been hungry. Likely <span class="u">worse</span> than we’ve been hungry, if they went that boldly against the normal ways of things.”</p><p>A few heads tipped, considering. Those tiniest motions gave Rue courage, and she went on:</p><p>“Once we bury these wolves, this terrible time will be over and it’ll be just a legend to tell. We can feed Verdana’s trees with the wolves’ remains. To get some good out of all this.”</p><p>Heads nodded all around, slow but sure. Voices asked the Barmonds how long the cleaning would take, asked each other if there was cloth for shrouds, and asked Syril how soon he might fly out with animal goods to trade — “The very moment you ask, friend!” was his trilled answer.</p><p>And Rue smiled, slight enough that it might go unnoticed.</p><p>“Fine ideas,” Judellie whispered beside her, grinning unashamed. “I think I picked well.”</p><p>“I was just using what I’ve learned,” Rue replied.</p><p>With a last shared sliver of smile, Judellie left. Still ungroomed and unrested, possibly unfed, and lending her bottomless strength to carry a wolf carcass. Aemet friends already brought ragged scraps of cloth to pass for shrouds; farm folk brought shovels and pails, pointing to the bloodied street dust that might become fertilizer. Good, Rue thought — it was good that she the tinctorer didn’t need to show them.</p><p>Rue couldn’t have said how long she stood watching the efforts, taking in the feeling of giving guidance. She only cared a little for it. Not enough to stop her from wanting the open forest, the chorus of creatures and a soft-panting dog by her side. She touched Feor and yet lingered a moment longer. Long enough to spot ferrin bounding in the broodery oaks, then scrambling down their trunks. The wild ferrin had found some green-leafed bounty and they carried it ginger in their mouths.</p><p>Chi sighted Rue immediately, and scampered toward her. The bough she carried bounced as she ran — a bough of alfalfa tipped with purple blooms. Rue hadn’t seen that plantshape in long months. She knelt, grasping Feor’s collar to hold him still.</p><p>Standing to her haunches, Chi dropped the alfalfa into Rue's hand; her ears canted greeting even before she spoke. “Hello! We found things for you!”</p><p>“I see that,” Rue said. She bound the plant with curled fingers, a light weight but a nutritious one.</p><p>“That is … for making people strong.” Chi shifted from foot to foot. With the unease of not knowing enough words, Rue thought — until she realized better. Chi spoke with gentle regret. “We-the-eight are safe … But some Aloftway people went back to the casting. We …” She raised a paw, and touched her heart-filled chest. “We hurt with you.”</p><p>It meant a whole land more than Chi was actually speaking. Rue sensed that endless gravity and she forgot commontongue words, herself; the alfalfa stem she gripped was a delicate constuction of lifestrength that could be eaten in a mere moment. “Thank you,” she said. “But aemets and ferrin are supposed to— We’re always friends. We were friends even before we knew each other. You see?”</p><p>Like that clumsy answer pleased her, Chi brightened and chirped a glad note.</p><p>The peoplekinds were meant to help each other. That had been so since ancient times, long before legends were steeped into words. They weren’t meant to wonder if the other kinds would help them, or how long they were going to drift. That was true of korvikind, too; the land was a triangle of strong friends but there was one fellow Rue kept wondering about. She lowered her hand, and placed the alfalfa back in Chi’s small paws.</p><p>“I need to go. Felixi made me a promise … I have to go ask if he will keep it. You understand …?”</p><p>Chi nodded, and she peered searching at Rue. “Felixi will help!” She gestured to the sky, as wide a sweep as her short arm could scribe. “You can wave, and he will come. Don’t forget.”</p><p>That had proved true every time Rue tried it. So many coincidences had to have meaning. She nodded, and touched the alfalfa leaves. “Please bring this to Elova and Denelend. They are inside the house.”</p><p>Chi squeaked glad, and considered Rue for another few clicks. Setting the alfalfa between careful teeth, she turned away.</p><p>There was a lot to be fixed, Rue sensed. All the terrors of Aloftway’s aemetkind — real and imagined and unknowable — and the troubles of they-the-eight, too. If they knew peoplekind through Felixi, gods only knew what they thought of other peoplekinds. Maybe they had never brought a simple gift of leaves without it being part of a hard-knuckled trade. Maybe Chi had been waiting to see what Rue would ask of her.</p><p>All Rue could reasonably hope was that the alfalfa would help Mother gain back some strength. A mote of the strength she had been trying to gather all along, slipped away once again. Off into the mountain air that folk said would do her some good.</p><p>Rue left with Feor alongside her. She didn’t suppose Felixi would make her climb the dandelion cliffs again. That left only one place to find him, and Rue hoped it wouldn’t take long to find him in the turbulent sky.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0029"><h2>29. Chapter 29</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They took the most familiar route Rue had, where her own shoes had eroded a thread of a path. Feor followed steady, although on an uneven gait, favouring his wolf-bitten paw. At least there was no need to hurry, Rue supposed. She reined herself, forcing her own feet slower.</p><p>Beyond the even measure of Feor’s panting, Rue grew nervous at the thought of the Velgarro, a feeling that had long since left and now suddenly reared over her. Felixi might actually share secrets now. If he had mustered enough goodness to land in the Aloftway streets he disliked, to strike at a dangerous hunting beast and shield aemet eyes from the sight, what wouldn’t he do? What wouldn’t he grudgingly give? Rue needed to know, she decided with a smouldering in her heart. If she had to bother Felixi, get under his feathers and needle the truth from him, then that was what she would do. She kept herself to Feor’s pace and in those too-long moments of walking, she knew the shape of her goal.</p><p>And as she came out from the tree shadows, into the daisy field, she searched the day-bright sky for a korvishape. There was none. Only clouds and churning wind.</p><p>But Rue’s sense called her to the far side of the field, to a hunched form. It couldn’t be, Rue thought even while she saw the truth, the tight-folded fans of his wings and his horns pointing skyward. Felixi sat hunched in this field, quiet as branches. There was precious little plant cover to hide him, only a few daisies wagging against his back. He perched with his knees folded against his chest, furrowing dirt with his claws. Over and over, thoughtlessly steady.</p><p>Here was what Rue wanted, a gift thrown at her without warning. Nerves boiled in her stomach. And slowly, on steps one after another, she approached him. Sensing every shift of his feathers in wind, wondering if the crunch of her shoes on soil was announcement enough. She and Feor came within a short stone’s throw before Felixi turned an eye toward them, one sliver of a glance.</p><p>“Ah, good,” he said. “It’s been plenty long enough.”</p><p>“Felixi … How long have you been here?”</p><p>“Since last night,” he muttered. “I didn’t have any other pressing matters.”</p><p>She was so full of gale-churned feelings, not one of them seemed like the right one to feel. She commanded <span class="u">stay</span> to Feor and she chanced another step closer herself. All the plans and fierce vows Rue had made were gone, scattered on wind.</p><p>“Back there … You said you had hunted the wolves. And that their den was close to our village. If you knew that, why didn’t you tell me?”</p><p>“And say what? That it was my fault your kin were struck down by hunting beast, a bolt from neverwhere?"</p><p>She stared wide-eyed at him, this strange man suddenly stranger. Nearly like a wolf himself — unpredictable, looking away into the forest with wild eyes.</p><p>“What?” Rue breathed. “What’s your fault?”</p><p>He curled tighter around his knees, sinking his weapon claws into the earth. “I might've spat my fire at aemet folk directly. It would have saved a lot of worrying all around.”</p><p>Korvi turning their roiling fire on another person: now that was insanity, too awful to ever really happen. Felixi was giving her nonsense instead of a real answer but he wouldn’t hunch like that — around some injury of the soul, around his own snapping guilt — if he weren’t hiding something. The same thing he hid every time he had ever bitten his words off short.</p><p>“Tell me what happened," Rue said.</p><p>"It doesn't matter now.”</p><p>"It does, if we're to have any hope of fixing it.”</p><p>Felixi let out a gusting sigh, the entire contents of his barrel chest. He put his shins flat against the earth and knelt, rebalancing himself so he faced Rue. And when his eye landed on Feor, he held out a hand. “Here. Come on.”</p><p>Hesitating, Feor looked to Rue and back to Felixi. He trembled uncertain.</p><p>“<span class="u">Here</span>,” Rue told him.</p><p>Feor came a few eager steps toward Rue, and reconsidered Felixi’s offered hand. Carefully, skewing larger his own limping motion, he went to Felixi.</p><p>A smirk touched Felixi’s face. “Heh. Generous sorts, dogs.” He rubbed behind Feor's ear, watching the dog's tail begin, tentatively, to wag.</p><p>“Mind his neck,” Rue said. “It’s freshly healed.”</p><p>Felixi grunted agreement. Then he bowed his head toward the earth. “I’ve got a terrible story for you, Rue. If a bard told it, I think he'd be thrown out of town.”</p><p>He paused to swallow, a sense of mustered courage gathering in the air. Rue suddenly felt tall, standing there in the grass. She sat down herself, crossing her legs together.</p><p>"I think I deserve to hear it," she said small.</p><p>Another uneasy flick of his gaze. More wind between the trees, around the three of them in a makeshift circle. Then Felixi spoke.</p><p>“It was— It happened two years ago. Maybe two and a half, give or leave a few months. I haven't cared to keep track. I was on the weather side of this mountain, south of here. Just caught a deer that was hardly worth the trouble — it struggled, I hadn’t managed to cut it cleanly. It bled something terrible by the time I finished the job.”</p><p>He watched his own scratching hand in Feor's fur, face as flat as stone. He had a scar on his forearm, Rue noticed, a white line skirting around the knob of his wristbone. She wondered if the frightened deer gave him that.</p><p>"So there I was, sitting in a valley and trying to dress this game beast, both of us bleeding fit to dye the earth. And the smell of blood brought wolves.”</p><p>He paused, lowering his hand from Feor. The dog stared expectantly and, when more petting wasn't forthcoming, he laid down to to stare at Felixi.</p><p>“It was a long wager, with me cut already, just my knife and my smoke to back up my good name.”</p><p>“You … couldn’t use your fire? It was too dry?”</p><p>“Yes, yes,” Felixi grumbled. “Fire’s not to be used anywhere but rock or sand, hearth or land.” He rubbed a hand into his mane feathers, his eyes far away. “I did suppose that if they got a sure hold of me, I could give them some fire. Hardly anything to lose if it came to that.” His lip wrinkled; his eyes flashed. “But if they were going to steal my prey, they could go ahead and be damned. That was my more present thought.”</p><p>“You cared more about your meal than your life? That’s—” Rue held her teeth together. <span class="u">Stupid</span> seemed a shade too honest.</p><p>Felixi hackled, air rushing under his feathers. An unlit regret yanked his eyes farther away. “Think what you want. The long and short is that I was too spirited for the wolves' tastes. They made a few holes in my hide, I paid the favours back. One was dim enough to try my back and he got a taste of my horns. But then the beasts gathered together, and just like that, they left.”</p><p>“… And?”</p><p>“The wolves took their leave going up the mountain. Wasn’t where they had come from. I was watching them go, thinking a few sharp words about it and then … Distant, in some standing grass, I saw a tail that didn’t look like a wolf.” He paused. Thought crumpled the corners of his mouth. “Brush-shaped, with a black tip. It was a ferrin tail.”</p><p>One of his wild friends, Rue thought like a rush of chill water.</p><p>“And I stood there,” Felixi went on, “just gaping while the two groups of them ran together in the shadows. Maybe the wolves got a drop on them, maybe those small folk just panicked— I don’t know how it worked, only that there was a flash of electric light. One of them cast a spark. I sighted the wolves leaving between the trees, so all was fine and well, hmm? Ferrin can look after themselves. I went back to my deer and kept dressing it, blighted fool.”</p><p>“What’s foolish about that?” Rue asked.</p><p>“Not checking my surroundings, Rue,” he snapped. “Deciding that all was well when I had no blazing idea what I’d set in motion! I didn’t look up again until I heard the fire. You’ve likely never been close to a fire grown that large. It makes such a quiet roar.”</p><p>“A large fire …” Rue said. Her innards sank. “You said this was three years ago?”</p><p>“I did.”</p><p>“I know the fire you mean.” Smoke filling the air, heat tearing the sky. Mother singing salvation songs for Denelend’s low-fallen ears to hear. “It— It was dry that season. The fire had plenty to feed on, we thought we might have to call exodus.”</p><p>“Mm,” Felixi said toneless. “I suppose you didn’t hear the voices?”</p><p>“The what?” Surely not demon voices. Felixi had more sense than to believe that.</p><p>He looked back to the forest distance, the calm-puddled shadows. Rue felt young, suddenly, and greenly aware of her years.</p><p>“I snatched up the best pieces of my deer, and I made to fly away. Carefully, around the fire’s edge. Breathing in a forest fire's smoke is the last mistake any creature makes. So I was paying mind, passing low over treetops … And there were ferrin voices. Crying out.”</p><p>"Oh," Rue breathed. She could only imagine how awful it would be to sense that truth.</p><p>"Screaming," Felixi corrected himself. “No words, just their wild tongue. And I thought, someone ought to help them. Not this hunter, drained of blood and struggling with his own wings. And where would I land, anypace? It was all treetops and embers. So … I kept on. ”</p><p>He stared for a long moment, just stared into his regrown thoughts. Rue could nearly sense them all around, the regrets circled close. She waited. The wind stirred daisy leaves. Feor’s tail twitched hopeful and on halting, gearbox motions, Felixi put a hand out to pet him. Petting Rue’s dog like the dog understood better than anyone.</p><p>"I met those ferrin later,” Felixi said. “Went flying until I found them. Thought they'd be out soothing their burns in the stream water and sure enough, they were. And they were gathering purple avens, and chewing it to put on Dwo's mess of a tail. I didn't know he was Dwo at the time. And Chi was searching for more herbs — she’s the one who sighted me. First time they-the-eight had ever met a korvi and it had to be this korvi.” Felixi glanced to Rue, sudden and surreptitious — as though he had forgotten he was speaking out loud. “Three of their kin had died that day.”</p><p>"They... they hadn’t managed to run?"</p><p>"Not from the bottom of a dry old tree, they couldn't.”</p><p>Rue tried to swallow. Her throat was tied in a sticky knot.</p><p>"That's the worst of the story, Rue. It took me some months to figure out why the wolves weren't hunting their usual prey creatures. I was busy paying mind to the ferrin. They were torn apart by a fire like that and I couldn’t even find the decency to tell them why.”</p><p>“That’s a sad tale," she said.</p><p>"Sad and full of sins.” Felixi stood. Standing as well, Feor looked up at him, mouth open in a hopeful smile. “Hmm. Call your dog, if you would?"</p><p>Rue called him, low but commanding. Feor shifted over a token few steps and settled pleasantly close, a friend by her side.</p><p>“There’s your news,” Felixi said. The edges and fangs were gone from his voice, leaving just rough-spun truth. “An electric spark in the wrong patch of dry grass and here we are today. Those wolves were burned, too. Must’ve decided to hunt easier prey than deer.”</p><p>“I … I wish we had known that sooner,” Rue said. “Or that you had … told someone. Any folk with a heart would have helped you and the ferrin. Honestly, Felixi.”</p><p>He shifted his wings, resettling them tighter. “Anything else you care to know?"</p><p>She wasn't sure what to ask for, what slice of Felixi's grim thoughts he might give next. The thought of forest creatures scarred indirectly by korvi fire was plenty to digest for now. But at the thought of the wild ferrin, Rue wet her lips and asked, “The ferrin... Do they know how the fire started?"</p><p>"No. It's better if they don't know — promise me that, Rue.”</p><p>They might think it was just luck, just a terrible run of luck. Which was exactly the truth: it was Felixi's terrible luck. No reason to it at all. Rue lowered her head. “I promise.”</p><p>He gave her another wavering look, dissecting her with eyes like keen claws, and he nodded. If nothing else, Rue could be sure that he had fear hidden away in his heart. Same as everyone else.</p><p>He didn’t want to speak anymore, after that. He stood like he had spent all the words inside him, drained them like casting essence.</p><p>“I suppose that was a tale. What I just told you. You ought to tell me one, too.”</p><p>“Any in particular?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>Maybe a legend, Rue thought, but she didn’t care for a legend’s distance in this moment. She gathered what courage she had left, the shifting little pile of sand.</p><p>“The Tennels, we’re tinctorers. Testers of the soil, you know?”</p><p>He nodded. No edge of impatience — only a mild, welcoming nod.</p><p>With something golden growing in her heart, Rue went on, “The skill’s been in the family for generations. I couldn’t tell you precisely how many, but at least a hundred. I’m told that the first tinctoring Tennel found the skill by accident, in the most peculiar way …”</p><p>It was pleasant to tell that wandering story, Rue found. Pleasant to speak about the old roots of her bloodline, to smile over the Tennel’s smooth-worn gems of story while Felixi and Feor sat equally docile, both listening with dark eyes. The daybright shifted and soon muddled with oncoming night; at some point, Rue ended up adding in the legend of Mandragora meeting tinctoria on the mountainside. Felixi didn’t comment, just scratched more idle lines into the soil as steady as a song.</p><p>“So the Mandragora plucked one of its rainbow petals, and wrung out the hues. It was a gift of dye for the tinctoria to keep—”</p><p>She stopped, attention jerking outward through her airsense. Movement behind her in the leaves, approaching. But it was bouncing movement, the leaping of small folk. Both Felixi and Feor stared at her, tightening to attention.</p><p>“Just ferrin,” she said. She patted Feor to tell him the same.</p><p>“I’ll stay, then,” Felixi said.</p><p>And a short moment later, furkind friends emerged into the open — Chi and Pel, both squeaking relief and hurrying toward Rue and Felixi. Feor stood to greet them, tail wagging.</p><p>“Hello, friends,” Chi sang out. She canted her ears with worry as she reached Rue. “They are worried about you.”</p><p>It was nearly nightfall, the time where wolves might stalk — if there were any left on this mountain. The thought felt tragic. How could the land right itself with so many pieces broken off?</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Rue said. “But … Felixi and I have some troubles to talk about.”</p><p>“The deal,” Felixi added, roughly torn from his throat. “We’re … making sure I get a good trade. For protecting Aloftway.”</p><p>Which was a wretchedly petty way to put it, but the ferrin both agreed with their ears.</p><p>Rue asked, “Could one of you go back? Brenne needs to know that I am safe.” Foolish as it was to still be scared. Rue had all manner of friends gathered, and no hunters left to fear.</p><p>Chi and Pel discussed it silent. Then Pel repeated careful, “Rue is safe. She is talking to Felixi.” He stared hopeful at Felixi.</p><p>“That’s right,” Felixi said mild.</p><p>Brightening a fraction, Pel chirped. He hurried away, back up a sapling and away bounding through the forest.</p><p>Once he was gone, Felixi added, “That wasn’t all true. We’re talking about more than the deal.”</p><p>Ears tilting a question, Chi came closer, tottering on her back feet. She made a fine match in their gathered group, a small companion to tuck against Feor’s side.</p><p>“Be careful,” Rue said, “He is hurt.”</p><p>Expression melting, Chi sniffed at Feor’s fur and was sniffed in return.</p><p>“Gods,” Felixi said. “All the time I’ve been thinking on this, chewing it like a dog myself. This mountain needs to be fixed. The land part of it, I mean.”</p><p>“It’s not a fine place for a home,” Rue agreed. “Not right now.”</p><p>With deep eyes, Chi said, “This land is sick. Isn’t it?”</p><p>“Sick with incompetence,” Felixi growled, then corrected himself, “With … not knowing the right thing. You can get trade goods coming to this place but that won’t knit the wound.”</p><p>Doubting that Chi would be able to keep up — but hoping she might — Rue sighed. “The mountainside … It needs time. The gasterslugs will run their course, and that burned field will regrow. I’ve seen green shoots pushing up, but it’ll take … I don’t know. Years, I suppose. Just like it’ll take more years for our farming folk to coax some good harvests out of the fields.”</p><p>“And you don’t have the sense to return where you came from?”</p><p>“I don’t think this has anything to do with good sense. People with sense would never try anything new. If I had sense, I wouldn’t have left my home all these months while the wolves were stalking us. I … think I see what my father meant.”</p><p>Felixi regarded her in the twilight, his gaze blunt now.</p><p>Chi ventured, “You are from … not here. You came with your family?”</p><p>The simplicity was a cool rain, a refreshing drink after dusty confusion.</p><p>“Yes,” Rue said. “My father told us to come live here. He isn’t living in Aloftway right now, but he … he wanted a place with trees, and green food. Like he could … give good things to his children, and everyone we love.”</p><p>Chi’s ears levelled soft, a smile touching her face. “You have a very big family. Everyone can help! And we-the-eight can find things, show aemet people where to find things.”</p><p>“Yes, all of us just … trying. That’s what I want.” Simple words or not, this was the truth, Rue found.</p><p>The calm stayed for a moment, unbroken as a pond’s surface. Then Felixi stirred. He stood with a low huff of breath, moving like his joints had rusted.</p><p>"Where are you going?"</p><p>He stood there with his strong neck bowed. “We made a bargain, Rue, that Aloftway village would ask no more of me.”</p><p>“Not the way we have been,” Rue asked. “Not expecting you to save us wholly, I mean.” Perhaps this quiet hadn’t been as calm as she thought.</p><p>“Then I’ll be leaving. For some time, however long it takes to scratch up these gasterslugs. I don’t like the look of the land to our north, that used to be a field as healthy as anything.”</p><p>Rue sensed the set of him, the half-bristle of his feathers. “All right,” she said. As though her permission was worth a whit.</p><p>“Chi. You stay strong. Make sure the eight-of-you are healthy and happy.”</p><p>Chi crooned, a long and unhappy sound. “You need friends.”</p><p>“You need more you, you need … some sort of a hope and a prayer— ” Felixi yanked to a stop, like a snare line held him. “Just. Let me work on it for a while. I can manage some slugs on my own. I won’t be caught with my back turned again. And when I’ve finished with that … I’ll spend more of my time here over Surgings.”</p><p>Ears flattening, Chi hopped toward him, and she whined like the lonely wind.</p><p>“You’re going to,” Rue tried, “go plant cuttings? You’ll need someone to cast on them if you want to make any—”</p><p>“I can’t be sure it’ll do anything,” Felixi snapped. His back stood hackled, every feather defiant like a thorn. “But nothing is sure, Rue. You should know that by now.”</p><p>Of all the things Felixi was wrong about, the truth wasn’t one of them. “I know,” she agreed.</p><p>“Chi,” he said. His head turning a fraction, he favoured her with a glance. “I’m leaving for a while. I think you will do fine without me. Just protect the people of Aloftway. They need it, clearly enough.”</p><p>She stared wet-eyed, quivering, but she had no protests for him. She must have known that this fellow needed open air.</p><p>Felixi regarded Rue just as sure. “Next time, I’ll search for <span class="u">you</span>.”</p><p>He opened his wings, and took off from that daisy field with a wash of air. Air that rolled over his three friends left behind in the night and faded away where the grass had once been.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0030"><h2>30. Chapter 30</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Aloftway was a new town in the days afterward. Not flawless, not whole. Only new. Folk sang in the street, scattered lines of salvation hymns that seemed to spring forth without intent, and then vanish into the wind like freed birds.</p><p>Feor’s paw healed well, and he stopped flinching at every touch to his neck. Mother stayed quiet, sitting with the patchwork blankets wound around her. Rue expected her to rise, to take in a deep breath of mountain air and head for the Middling circle, for the plants she truly loved. Mother didn’t do that. She took tonics and soft-cooked meals, and returned to her bed well before dusk.</p><p>The Middling came and went, and handfuls of shared food marked the days. Rue called Feor to her one morning — with a pack of supplies tied tight to her lower back, and her pouch full of woodpaper sheets and bones, camellia and tinctoria to trade. The beryl’s fiery weight sat in her pocket, just in case.</p><p>“I’ll be careful,” she told Denelend. “Don’t worry. I’ll head straight toward the road and keep to it.” All the small suggestions Father had ever given her.</p><p>“All right,” Denelend said. He was small and strong as ever, holding his ears politely level for Rue. “We’ll be fine, I’m sure. You have your leaf?”</p><p>He asked on Mother's behalf. Pointless to dig it out again, but Rue couldn’t grudge Mother even one bit of legend lore. She slid fingers under her tunic, under her bindings and pulled out the smoothness of the willow leaf. It would let prayers be heard clearer, if Rue cared to make any.</p><p>Elova Tennel smiled faint, her eyes drawn to Verdana’s favoured leaf.</p><p>“I’ll bring you greens,” Rue told Mother, pushing the leaf back into place. “Rest well, all right?”</p><p>“Thank you, dear,” Elova said. She stared into the air with tired eyes, sitting unmoving among her bedclothes and her distant thoughts.</p><p>With her dog by her side, Rue set out to wander. Out through the well-mapped forest and onward, to find something worth speaking of.</p><p>Rue was a mere few steps from the house when she sensed Denelend behind her, his wedge nose parting the air as he ran. As Rue turned to him, Denelend skidded and sat onto his haunches; his ears falling, maybe regretting his haste.</p><p>“Rue … Apologies for holding you up.”</p><p>“What is it?”</p><p>“I …” He drooped further. “Is there something else I could try? To cheer her?”</p><p>If Rue knew that, she would have tried it. Or picked it or grown it, steeped it or refined it or demanded it down from the sky. She turned her face to the earth.</p><p>“No,” she told Denelend. She pressed her mouth. “Well … Unless my father comes back. There’s always that hope.”</p><p>His ears trembling — with the weight of his untruth, however small, Denelend nodded. “I’ll just keep her well until then. And I think I can look after the Middling circle, too. Some of what Elova does, anypace. Not the casting.” His whiskers twitched, and he wiped his face clean with a bright smile. “Well, it’s nothing to stir up mud about. Good journeys! Bring me back a tale, all right?”</p><p>“I think I can do that,” Rue said.</p><p>He gave Feor a pat on the chest. And that kind brother turned back toward home, the one with a single Tennel inside.</p><p>This must have been what Father felt, years ago when he walked out into the land and hoped his family would be well without him. That he would return to a thriving, flowering community, a place where legends were born. That Lavender was sowing a legacy, too, since it took many plants to make a forest.</p><p>Rue walked the street, holding her gaze ahead steady, stretching her airsense out around her. Neighbours stirred in homes — handling shapes, drifting toward steam-filled stewpots. A few aemets had their backs to the village street, holding their hands near the plant wall and sharing of themselves. Scattered segments of the mostly-built wall that was now lovely to look at, overlaid with slender new vines, dotted with wisteria petals turned toward the gemlight.</p><p>Beyond the chromepiece was the mage home, and behind that were the two figures, Brenne and Mara. Sitting with their legs folded, beside a wall made of trees and brambles laced together, and speaking of calm things. Rue couldn’t fathom what Brenne spent so long saying, but their long-ago mage Mara wore a comprehending smile again. <span class="u">Just a little more valerian,</span> Brenne kept saying. <span class="u">Just more time and more weightless words. Our Amarantha will return to us, I’m sure of it. She’s just finding her way</span>.</p><p>The most difficult part would be heading down the mountain, Rue supposed. Down the stark rock and roots she remembered, the path that bounced wagon wheels. She would need to make slow progress and mind her dear, brave dog; his bad paw might not hold his entire weight yet.</p><p>Red feathers showed through the eastern plant wall — the remaining sliver of the eastern wall, anypace. A tall patch of thorny plum saplings wrapped around one another, with Judellie scraping toe claws at their roots. Her eye caught on Rue and she started, seizing still, but she let out a relieved breath when she saw Rue properly.</p><p>“What’s got your nerves bristly?” Rue asked.</p><p>“Shhh.” Resettling her feathers, Judellie kept scraping at the exposed white rootstalks, a slower motion with no less pride in it. “I’m making more room for the incoming path. I’m burnt and tired of this wall, Rue.”</p><p>“What? Why?”</p><p>Pausing her work, Judellie stared down into the hole. She leaned back onto her tail and wiped one foot on the fallen leaves. “Now that I have had time to think on it, we folk of Aloftway shouldn’t wall ourselves away. How will anyone find us? How will we look our troubles in the eyes? I should have dropped onto those wolves right at the start, when they first broke the natural way of things.”</p><p>That was a possibility long gone, swept away by time. Rue said nothing.</p><p>“But I didn’t,” Judellie spat. “I wanted to protect you folk and I just … followed you around and hoped we would all be fine.”</p><p>“Everyone appreciated it,” Rue said hopeful.</p><p>“Everyone should have listened to <span class="u">you</span>.”</p><p>It felt good to hear — a comfort that rang hollow.</p><p>“That … I don’t think that could have happened. Not with this balance of peoplekinds. We have our ways …” Rue shook her head. “They’re just not the right ways for this Tennel.”</p><p>“You aren’t leaving for long, are you?”</p><p>“I don’t think so. I’m only going to Widely.”</p><p>“All right.” Judellie grasped her arms, with the same strong hands that lifted Rue from a cart in a day long past. “If you aren’t back in an eightday, I will come searching for you. Bet on that.”</p><p>“Thank you.” With a full heart, Rue laid one of her hands over Judellie’s for just a click, until they parted. “And don’t make everyone cross in the meantime. Be careful with those roots.”</p><p>“If folk ask, I just saw a gasterslug.” Another scrape of her dirt-caked claws. She turned a thin, crafty smile toward Rue. “Right here.”</p><p>“That tale will only work as long as there are gasterslugs.” It had been days since Rue had pulled one from the earth to toss to Feor — not that she could complain too bitterly about it, all things considered.</p><p>“Fah! Small things.” After a pat to Feor’s head, Judellie turned back to her work. “I’ll have more paper for you when you return, Rue. Promise it to anyone you’d like.”</p><p>Ideally not paper made of those plum trees’ wood.</p><p>Out in the forest, Rue and Feor walked as they did any other day. Through Rue’s remembered tinctor colours, with unknown ground drawing ever closer. She could test the path on the way down, said a leap of excitement. Know the soil from here to Widely and forage some things Vraya or Syril might like. Or someone with a new face.</p><p><span class="u">Bring back a tale</span>, Denelend said in her memory. Aloftway ought to have a legend, Rue thought. Not a ghastly rumour of a chaos demon winging about the mountaintop, and not a report of how many died by desperately hungry beasts. Some well-phrased tale of how an aemet could take action if she damnably pleased. Some moral to use as a lantern in bleak times. Maybe that legend would have a lyrical part about the dandelion valley. Children would surely imagine the seeds spinning and dancing in the air, and they would remember. They would learn to have ambition, to fly for themselves if that was what they wanted. If other folk had a well-made tale to teach them, then they might find the courage to live, too.</p><p>The wind turned and brought ferrin voices from the forest, they-the-eight yelping some message to each other. Travelling safer and more confident in the forest that was managing to sustain them. Rue stood alone but she knew friends would find her whichever direction she turned; her heart was splitting, a seed kernel soaked with rain.</p><p>Above the treetops, winds churned the yellow sky. Dandelion seeds hung up there like a promise of freedom. And Rue carried on walking down her path — one marked faint, but still a path.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>